REVOKE priv_type [(column_list)] [, priv_type [(column_list)]] ...
    ON {tbl_name | * | *.* | db_name.*}
    FROM user [, user] ...

REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES, GRANT OPTION FROM user [, user] ...

The REVOKE statement enables system administrators to revoke privileges from MySQL accounts. To use REVOKE, you must have the GRANT OPTION privilege, and you must have the privileges that you are revoking. REVOKE is implemented in MySQL 3.22.11 or later. For earlier MySQL versions, it does nothing.

Each account is named using the same format as for the GRANT statement; for example, 'jeffrey'@'localhost'. If you specify only the username part of the account name, a hostname part of '%' is used. For additional information about specifying account names, see Section 13.5.1.2, “GRANT Syntax”.

For details on the levels at which privileges exist, the allowable priv_type values, and the syntax for specifying users and passwords, see Section 13.5.1.2, “GRANT Syntax”

If the grant tables hold privilege rows that contain mixed-case database or table names and the lower_case_table_names system variable is set to a non-zero value, REVOKE cannot be used to revoke these privileges. It will be necessary to manipulate the grant tables directly. (GRANT will not create such rows when lower_case_table_names is set, but such rows might have been created prior to setting the variable.)

To make it easy to revoke all privileges, MySQL 4.1.2 has added the following syntax, which drops all global, database-, table-, and column-level privileges for the named users:

REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES, GRANT OPTION FROM user [, user] ...

To use this REVOKE syntax, you must have the UPDATE privilege for the mysql database.

Before MySQL 4.1.2, all privileges cannot be dropped at once. Two statements are necessary:

REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* FROM user [, user] ...
REVOKE GRANT OPTION ON *.* FROM user [, user] ...

REVOKE removes privileges, but does not drop user table entries. You must do that explicitly using DELETE. In MySQL 4.1.1 and later, you can also use DROP USER to remove users; see Section 13.5.1.1, “DROP USER Syntax”.