AVENGE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does avenge mean? 

• AVENGE (verb)
  The verb AVENGE has 1 sense:

1. take revenge for a perceived wrong

  Familiarity information: AVENGE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AVENGE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they avenge    ... he / she / it avenges   
Past simple: avenged   
Past participle: avenged   
-ing form: avenging   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Take revenge for a perceived wrong

Classified under:

Verbs of fighting, athletic activities

Synonyms:

avenge; retaliate; revenge

Context example:

He wants to avenge the murder of his brother

Hypernyms (to "avenge" is one way to...):

penalise; penalize; punish (impose a penalty on; inflict punishment on)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "avenge"):

get back; get even (take revenge or even out a score)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

avenger (someone who takes vengeance)

 Context examples 

They passed out through the gates of the park with, straggling in the rear, a second gang, the friends that Lizzie's young man had collected to avenge the loss of his lady.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

“The Inspector here has done all that could possibly be suggested, but I wish to leave no stone unturned in trying to avenge poor Straker and in recovering my horse.”

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He would avenge me, it is true, but it is not to him that I shall look for vengeance.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There would be little satisfaction in killing him if he was not to know whose hand had struck the blow, or which of his sins it came to avenge.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber's letter, and returned the elevation of eyebrows with which he said ““Wielding the thunderbolt, or directing the devouring and avenging flame!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I could read in them a set purpose to devote his life to this quest until the client whom he had failed to save should at last be avenged.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As Kiche, when with the wolves, had lured out to destruction dogs from the camps of men, so White Fang, in manner somewhat similar, lured Lip-lip into Kiche's avenging jaws.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I am his brother, and, come what will I will die happy now, for his memory has been avenged.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You shall be avenged in turn; for not one of them but shall minister to your needs. But as yet you are to be punished for what you have done.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I wished to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of abhorrence on his head and avenge the deaths of William and Justine.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)