vengeance

• vengeaunce (obsolete)

From Anglo-Norman vengeaunce, from Old French vengeance, venjance, from vengier (“to avenge”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈvɛnˌdʒəns/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛndʒəns

vengeance (countable and uncountable, plural vengeances)

1. Revenge taken for an insult, injury, or other wrong.
   • 2000, Gladiator (film):

     My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North; General of the Felix Legions; loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius; father to a murdered son; husband to a murdered wife; and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

2. Desire for revenge.
   • c. 1856, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit:

     Thereupon full of anger, full of jealousy, full of vengeance, she forms […] a scheme of retribution, […]

   • 2008, Jean Harvey Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography →ISBN:

     If her husband was all forgiveness, asking the bands to play “Dixie,” she was full of vengeance […]

   • 2011, James Calloway, Black America, Not in This America →ISBN:

     Are they full of vengeance[?], because they say that people with vengeance in their hearts must dig two graves, one for their enemy and the other for themselves.

• reprisal
• retaliation
• retribution
• revenge
• wreak
• See also Thesaurus:revenge

• reconciliation

venger +‎ -ance

• IPA^(key): /vɑ̃.ʒɑ̃s/
• Rhymes: -ɑ̃s
• Homophone: vengeances
• Hyphenation: ven‧geance

vengeance f (plural vengeances)

1. revenge, vengeance

• “vengeance” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

vengeance f (oblique plural vengeances, nominative singular vengeance, nominative plural vengeances)

1. Alternative form of venjance