801 – Ibn ʿAbbās (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet ﷺ said: “The one who takes back his gift is like a dog that vomits and then returns to its vomit.” Agreed upon.

In another wording recorded by al-Bukhārī: “We have no evil model to follow; the person who reclaims his gift is like a dog that goes back to its vomit.” ⦗1⦘

Glossary of ḥadīth terms
– “The one who takes back his gift”: the person who reclaims the donation he previously gave.
– “Its vomit”: the material expelled from the stomach; the comparison is drawn because doing so is patently repugnant, both in decorum and in character.
– “We have no evil model”: meaning, it is unbecoming for us Muslims to adopt a blameworthy trait that the basest of animals exhibits at its lowest moment.
– “Laysa”: an invariable past-tense verb of negation that raises its subject and puts its predicate in the accusative; here its subject is “an evil model,” and its predicate is the prepositional phrase “for us.”