Dictionary

unsign en · VERB

Etymology

From un- + sign.

Meanings

1. (intransitive, transitive) To remove one's signature from (something one has signed).
   • Listen : I say we signed, and there's no unsigning. And the voyage is never completed, though some may ask What creature is this, with the sea through his eyes looking[?] […] We signed and there's no unsigning. Hell, no, but she rolls And she rolls us like foam from her flanks, the gay mulatto. 1942, Robert Herring, editor, Life and Letters To-Day, volume 34, page 203:
   • UNSIGNING AND CHANGING A REPORT SHOULD ONLY BE USED IN VERY RARE CASES IN WHICH FAILURE TO CHANGE THE ORIGINAL REPORT COULD RESULT IN SIGNIFICANT HARM TO THE PATIENT. 2010, Manual of Surgical Pathology, 3rd edition, Susan Carole Lester, →ISBN, page 38:
2. (of a state, qualifier:or those acting on behalf of a state) To declare void one's signing of (a treaty).
   • The administration took the unprecedented step of unsigning the treaty, entered into negotiations with over 100 countries to inoculate the United States from its provisions, […] 2011, Lee Feinstein, Tod Lindberg, Means To An End: U.S. Interest in The International Criminal Court, page 46:
   • Unsigning the Rome Statute. My happiest moment at State was personally “unsigning” the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court (ICC). […] bureaucrats urged at every turn that foreign governments would be extremely upset if we unsigned. In fact, only High Minded Europeans cared even slightly, which was simply further evidence that unsigning was the right thing to do. 2008, John Bolton, Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations, page 85:
   • Third, transnational legal process could be used to erode the force of the novel US tactic of unsigning the Rome Treaty. 2005, Michael Ignatieff, American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, page 137:

Forms