amend
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Etymology
From Middle English amenden, from Old French amender, from Latin ēmendō (“free from faults”), from ex (“from, out of”) + mendum (“fault”). Compare aphetic mend. Doublet of emend.
Pronunciation
Verb
amend (third-person singular simple present amends, present participle amending, simple past and past participle amended)
- (transitive) To make better; improve.
- 1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC:
- Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;
Mar not the thing that cannot be amended.
- 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter XIII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:
- We shall cheer her sorrows, and amend her blood, by wedding her to a Norman.
- 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
- I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore kilts. But I see I will have to amend that, because he was not a celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I left New York for the West.
- (intransitive) To become better.
- 1847 March 30, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC:
- The teacher sat at one end of the bench, with a meek little fellow by his side. When the others were disorderly, this young martyr received a rap; intended, probably, as a sample of what the rest might expect, if they didn't amend.
- (obsolete, transitive) To heal (someone sick); to cure (a disease etc.).
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- But Paridell complaynd, that his late fight / With Britomart, so sore did him offend, / That ryde he could not, till his hurts he did amend.
- 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 2, member 6, subsection ii:
- he gave her a vomit, and conveyed a serpent, such as she conceived, into the basin; upon the sight of it she was amended.
- (obsolete, intransitive) To be healed, to be cured, to recover (from an illness).
- c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:
- Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls
That stay his cure: their malady convinces
The great assay of art; but at his touch—
Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand—
They presently amend.
- (transitive) To make a formal alteration (in legislation, a report, etc.) by adding, deleting, or rephrasing.
- 1876, Henry Martyn Robert, Robert’s Rules of Order, Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co., Article III, Section 23, p. 46:
- The following motions cannot be amended:
- 1990, Doug Hoyle, Hansard, Trade Union Act, 1984, Amendment no. 2, 4 July, 1990,
- It is necessary to amend the Act to preserve the spirit in which it was first passed into law […]
Conjugation
Synonyms
- ameliorate
- correct
- improve
- See also Thesaurus:improve
- See also Thesaurus:repair
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
to make better
|
to become better
|
to make a formal alteration
|
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Noun
amend (plural amends)
- (usually in the plural) An act of righting a wrong; compensation.
- 1813, John Elihu Hall, “Of Mariners”, in The American Law Journal, volume 4:
- Thus by the code of the Visigoths, it was forbidden to all strangers to take their subjects under a penalty of one hundred lashes and an amend in gold.
- 2008, Raphael Sabatini, Chivalry, page 114:
- It was her offer of surrender as an amend that, persuading him of her shining honesty, had aroused in him something akin to worship and had made an end of that cynical spirit in which for worldly ends he had aimed at marrying her.
- 2011, Bill Fifield, Sandy Fifield, Dig Deep in One Place: A Couple's Journey to a Spiritual Life, page 100:
- Did I owe him an amend? Probably not, but I did owe myself an amend. I did this by ceasing to resent.
- 2013, M. T., A Sponsorship Guide for 12-Step Programs, page 120:
- The point was, I wasn't really willing to make the amend, to make it right. But the point of an amend, as I understand it now, is to make it right for the person who was wringed, to the best of our ability, and in so doing, making it right for ourselves.
- (informal, of a document, usually in the plural) Clipping of amendment (“alteration or change for the better”).
- I've sent over a new version of the doc with some amends.
Derived terms
References
- “amend”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- “amend”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “amend”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
Anagrams
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