Withdrawal

How to spell withdrawal

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce withdrawal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does withdrawal mean?

1. nounThe act of taking something back, removing it, or retreating from a place or position.
2. nounThe physical and mental symptoms that follow stopping a drug or substance the body has come to depend on.

Withdrawal in a sentence

• The bank charges a fee on every cash withdrawal made abroad.

• The clinic helps patients manage the worst days of withdrawal safely.

• The general ordered the withdrawal of all troops from the border.

• Caffeine withdrawal can leave a regular coffee drinker with headaches.

Where does withdrawal come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the native English verb withdraw, which joined the Old English preposition 'with', here carrying its older sense of 'back' or 'away' rather than 'alongside', to the verb 'draw', meaning 'to pull'. To withdraw was therefore literally to pull oneself or something back, a sense recorded in English from around the 1200s. The abstract noun was formed much later by adding the suffix -al, which turns a verb into the name of an action; withdrawal is recorded from the early 1800s, supplanting the older form 'withdrawment'. Over time it gathered specialised uses, from taking money out of an account to retreating an army to the physical distress that follows stopping a drug. The spelling trap lies in that final stretch: the verb 'draw' keeps its 'aw', and the suffix adds 'al', giving 'drawal', a sequence writers often shorten by mistake to the non-existent 'withdrawl'.

How the word is built

• with- (back, away)
• draw (to pull)
• -al (noun suffix forming the act of)