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revoke

/ɹɪˈvoʊk/verb, noun

revoke is a verb meaning “To cancel or invalidate by withdrawing or reversing” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-E-V-O-K-E and has 2 syllables, and it appears 1.8 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does revoke mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To cancel or invalidate by withdrawing or reversing.

    Your driver's license will be revoked.

  2. 2

    To fail to follow suit in a game of cards when holding a card in that suit.

  3. 3

    obsoleteTo call or bring back.

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo hold back.

  5. 5

    obsoleteTo move (something) back or away.

  6. 6

    obsoleteTo call back to mind.

    late 1600s-early 1700s, Robert South, Sermon on Proverbs 18.14 in Sermons Preached on Several Occasions, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1823, p. 132, A man, by revoking and recollecting within himself former passages, will be still apt to inc

noun

  1. 1

    The act of revoking in a game of cards.

  2. 2

    A renege; a violation of important rules regarding the play of tricks in trick-taking card games serious enough to render the round invalid.

  3. 3

    A violation ranked in seriousness somewhat below overt cheating, with the status of a more minor offense only because, when it happens, it is usually accidental.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce revoke?

  • US /ɹɪˈvoʊk/
  • UK /ɹɪˈvəʊk/
  • UK /rɪˈvəʊk/

Revoke has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-revoke.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of revoke

  • revokes present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • revoking participle, present
  • revoked participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is revoke?

Revoke appears 1.8 times per million words in written English, the 20,629th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Revoke in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchrévoquer (to cancel or invalidate by withdrawing or…)
Germanwiderrufen, revozieren, einziehen, zurücknehmen, entziehen, zurückziehen (to cancel or invalidate by withdrawing or…)
Portugueserevogar, anular, cassar (to cancel or invalidate by withdrawing or…), fazer renúncia (cardgames: to fail to follow suit when one…), renúncia (the act of revoking in a game of cards)
Spanishrevocar (to cancel or invalidate by withdrawing or…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does revoke come from?

Borrowed from Middle French révoquer, from Latin revocare, from re- + voco, vocare. Doublet of revocate.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).