amend
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Old French amender, from Latin ēmendō (“free from faults”), from ex (“from, out of”) + mendum (“fault”). Confer aphetic mend.
Pronunciation[edit]
Verb[edit]
amend (third-person singular simple present amends, present participle amending, simple past and past participle amended)
- (transitive) To make better.
- 1594, William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece,[1]
- Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;
- Mar not the thing that cannot be amended.
- 1820, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, Chapter 13,[2]
- We shall cheer her sorrows, and amend her blood, by wedding her to a Norman.
- 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 1, in The Celebrity:
- 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.
- 1594, William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece,[1]
- (intransitive) To become better.
- (obsolete, transitive) To heal (someone sick); to cure (a disease etc.).
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.x:
- 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.
- 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, (please specify |partition=1, 2, or 3):, II.2.6.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.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.x:
- (obsolete, intransitive) To be healed, to be cured, to recover (from an illness).
- c. 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 3,[3]
- 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.
- c. 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 3,[3]
- (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,[4]
- The following motions cannot be amended:
- 1990, Doug Hoyle, Hansard, Trade Union Act, 1984, Amendment no. 2, 4 July, 1990,[5]
- It is necessary to amend the Act to preserve the spirit in which it was first passed into law […]
- 1876, Henry Martyn Robert, Robert’s Rules of Order, Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co., Article III, Section 23, p. 46,[4]
Synonyms[edit]
- ameliorate
- correct
- improve
- See also Thesaurus:improve
- See also Thesaurus:repair
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
to make better
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to become better
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to make a formal alteration
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked
References[edit]
- amend in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
- amend in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
