How do I recall a specific command from command history, without executing it

Solution 1:

You can do it like this: On the command prompt press Ctrl+r and then type the command you want to recall, in your case xyz. This will show you the complete command without executing it.

Solution 2:

Try !xyz:p; it will recall the command to the top of history without executing it, so eg up-arrow can immediately access it for interactive editing.

As an aside, I make a practice of doing this when recalling commands with a regexp that could conceivably dig up something damaging, ever since a hasty !r, intended to recall the most recent rsync ... command, pulled back and executed an rm * that had been pushed to the stack more recently than the rsync.