Trend Watch

The New York Times: 'Trump Rescinds Protections for Transgender Students'

The word means 'to take away'

Rescind (“to take away; remove”) became one of our top lookups on February 22nd, after Donald Trump rescinded protections for transgender students.

The Trump administration on Wednesday rescinded federal rules that allowed transgender students to use the bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.
—Jeremy W. Peters, Jo Becker, and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, The New York Times, 22 Feb. 2017

The word comes, in part, from the Latin word scindere (“to cut”). It shares this root with several other words in English which are now quite obscure: exscind (“to excise”) and prescind (“to withdraw one’s attention”). The noun form of this verb may be either rescindment or rescission.


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