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avenge

verbnouncommon in dialogue

  • //əˈvɛnd͡ʒ//

To take vengeance (for); to exact satisfaction for by punishing the injuring party; to vindicate by inflicting pain or evil on a wrongdoer.

verb

  1. 1

    To take vengeance (for); to exact satisfaction for by punishing the injuring party; to vindicate by inflicting pain or evil on a wrongdoer.

    to avenge the murder of his brother

    Avenge O Lord thy ſlaughter'd Saints, whoſe bones / Lie ſcatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,

    Father, today I will avenge your death.

  2. 2

    To revenge oneself (on or upon someone).

  3. 3

    obsoleteTo take vengeance.

    Thou shalt not auenge nor beare any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt loue thy neighbor as thy selfe: I am the Lord.

  4. 4

    archaicTo treat revengefully; to wreak vengeance on.

    thy judgment in avenging thine enemies

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd Proto-Italic *ad Proto-Italic *ad- Latin ad- Old French a- Proto-Indo-European *weyh₁-der. Proto-Indo-European *wéyh₁s Proto-Italic *wīs Latin vim Latin dīcere Proto-Indo-European *-s Latin -s Latin vindex Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin vindicāre Old French vengier Old French avengierbor. Middle English avengen English avenge Inherited from Middle English avengen, borrowed from Old French avengier, from a- + vengier.

noun

  1. 1

    archaicAn act of vengeance; a revenge.

Forms

plural
avenges
past tense
avenged
past participle
avenged
present participle
avenging
third person singular
avenges
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).