amend
/əˈmɛnd/
amend verb: to make better; improve. Also the clipping of amendment.
Verb
amend (third-person singular simple present amends, present participle amending, simple past and past participle amended)
- To make better; improve.
- Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;
Mar not the thing that cannot be amended.1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC - We shall cheer her sorrows, and amend her blood, by wedding her to a Norman.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...
- Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;
- To become better.
- 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.1847 March 30, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC
- To heal (someone sick); to cure (a disease etc.).
- 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.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
- he gave her a vomit, and conveyed a serpent, such as she conceived, into the basin; upon the sight of it she was amended.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...
- To be healed, to be cured, to recover (from an illness).
- 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. 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...
- Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls
- To make a formal alteration (in legislation, a report, etc.) by adding, deleting, or rephrasing.
- We amended the rules so that we could admit 20 more members to the club.
- The following motions cannot be amended:1876, Henry Martyn Robert, Robert’s Rules of Order, Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co., Article III, Section 23, p. 46
Noun
amend (plural amends)
- An act of righting a wrong; compensation.
- 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.1813, John Elihu Hall, “Of Mariners”, in The American Law Journal, volume 4
- 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.2008, Raphael Sabatini, Chivalry, page 114
Proper noun capitalized: Amend
Amend (plural Amends)
- A surname.
Also used as
amend is also the clipping of amendment.
amend meaning in Hindi, Kannada, Punjabi and Odia
amend in Hindi
- संशोधन करना
amend in Kannada
- ತಿದ್ದುಪಡಿ ಮಾಡುವುದು
amend in Punjabi
- ਸੋਧ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ
amend in Odia
- ସଂଶୋଧନ କରିବା
More languagesFewer languages
- amend in Nepali
- संशोधन गर्ने
- amend in Arabic
- حَسَّنَ ḥassana, حَسُنَ ḥasuna
Examples of amend in a sentence
- 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.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company...
- Probably not, but I did owe myself an amend.2011, Bill Fifield, Sandy Fifield, Dig Deep in One Place: A Couple's Journey to a Spiritual Life, page 100:
- The point was, I wasn't really willing to make the amend, to make it right.2013, M. T., A Sponsorship Guide for 12-Step Programs, page 120:
Synonyms of amend
Forms of amend
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | amends |
| present participle | amending |
| past participle | amended |
| past | amended |
| second-person singular present (archaic) | amendest |
| second-person singular past (archaic) | amendedst |
| third-person singular present (archaic) | amendeth |
| Noun | |
| plural | amends |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Amends |
Origin of amend
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.
Words formed from amend
Words that rhyme with amend
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- spend
- suspend
- trend
- ascend
- offend
- pretend
- unbend
- commend
- tend
- contend
- depend
- lend
- distend
- impend
- recommend
- rend
- shend
- subtend
- tight end
- upend
- wend
- append
- befriend
- blend
- pend
- resend
- transcend
- abend
- comprehend
- entend
- fend
- obtend
- perpend
- portend
- unfriend
- vend
- weekend
- when'd
- blende
- defriend
- disrecommend
- emend
- expend
- forfend
- forspend
- freakend
- genetic dead end
- heaven forfend
Questions about amend
- What does amend mean?
- Amend means to make better; improve.
- What is amend in Hindi?
- Amend in Hindi is संशोधन करना. See Amend meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use amend in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is amend?
- Amend can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce amend?
- Amend is pronounced /əˈmɛnd/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of amend?
- The past tense of amend is amended.
Words near amend in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: amend (page history and authors); Amend (page history and authors); amend (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); amend (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); amend (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); amend (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); amend (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-amend.wav.
Cite this entry: “amend.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/amend. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.