Brewer's: Palinode

(3 syl.). A song or discourse recanting a previous one. A good specimen of the palinode is Horace, book i. ode 16, translated by Swift. Watts has a palinode in which he retracts the praise bestowed upon Queen Anne. In the first part of her reign he wrote a laudatory poem to the queen, but he says that the latter part deluded his hopes and proved him a false prophet. Samuel Butler has also a palinode to recant what he said in a previous poem to the Hon. Edward Howard, who wrote a poem called The British Princes. (Greek, palin ode, a song again.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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