requite

• (archaic) requit

From Middle English: re- (“back”) + quite (“clear, pay up”)

• IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈkwaɪt/
• Rhymes: -aɪt

requite (third-person singular simple present requites, present participle requiting, simple past and past participle requited)

1. To return something (usually something figurative) that has been given; to repay; to recompense
   • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, act 3 scene 3

     But, remember—

     For that's my business to you,—that you three

     From Milan did supplant good Prospero;

     Expos'd unto the sea, which hath requit it,

     Him, and his innocent child: for which foul deed

     The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have

     Incens'd the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,

     Against your peace.

   • Edgar Allan Poe

     Good cryptographists are rare indeed; and thus their services, although seldom required, are necessarily well requited.

   • 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard

     He was standing at the window […] when in bounced little red-faced bustling Dr. Toole—the joke and the chuckle with which he had just requited the fat old barmaid still ringing in the passage […]

   • 1925, Franz Kafka, The Trial, Vintage Books (London), pg. 91:

     He bowed slightly to K.'s uncle, who appeared very flattered to make this new acquaintance, yet, being by nature incapable of expressing obligation, requited the Clerk of the Court's words with a burst of embarrassed but raucous laughter.

   • 1994 July 25, Jack Winter, “How I met my wife”, in The New Yorker:

     We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.

2. To retaliate.

• unrequited

requite

1. requital

• requite in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• requite in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• quieter