Revoke

How to spell revoke

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce revoke

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does revoke mean?

1. verbTo officially cancel or withdraw a right, licence, permission, or decision that was previously granted.

Revoke in a sentence

• The court can revoke a driving licence after repeated offences.

• The company decided to revoke his access to the secure database.

Where does revoke come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Revoke entered English in the late 1300s from the Old French revoquer, which came directly from the Latin revocare. That Latin verb was built from re-, meaning 'back', and vocare, meaning 'to call', so the literal sense was 'to call back'. From the idea of calling something back came the modern meaning of withdrawing or cancelling a right, permission, or decision that had previously been granted. The same vocare root surfaces in a whole family of English words including 'vocation', 'advocate', and 'provoke', all of which involve some form of calling. The spelling trap is the silent voicing: the word sounds like 'ree-VOKE', but the ending is a plain -oke, not -olk or -oak, and the single central consonant is a v, not a w.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• -voke (from vocare: to call)