Definition of "amend"

amend

/əˈmɛnd/

verb
third-person singular simple present amends, present participle amending, simple past and past participle amended
1. (transitive) To make better; improve.
  Quotations
  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, […]
  We shall cheer her sorrows, and amend her blood, by wedding her to a Norman.
  1820, Walter Scott, chapter XIII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […]
  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.
  1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
2. (intransitive) To become better.
  Quotations
  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, […]
3. (obsolete, transitive) To heal (someone sick); to cure (a disease etc.).
  Quotations
  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
  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: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, partition II, section 2, member 6, subsection ii
4. (obsolete, intransitive) To be healed, to be cured, to recover (from an illness).
  Quotations
  Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched soulsThat stay his cure: their malady convincesThe 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, published 1623, [Act IV, scene iii]
5. (transitive) To make a formal alteration (in legislation, a report, etc.) by adding, deleting, or rephrasing.
  Quotations
  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
  It is necessary to amend the Act to preserve the spirit in which it was first passed into law […]
  1990, Doug Hoyle, Hansard, Trade Union Act, 1984, Amendment no. 2, 4 July, 1990
noun
plural amends
1. (usually in the plural) An act of righting a wrong; compensation.
  Quotations
  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
  Did I owe him an amend? Probably not, but I did owe myself an amend. I did this by ceasing to resent.
  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. But the point of an amend, as I understand it now, is to make it right for the person who was wringed, to the best of our ability, and in so doing, making it right for ourselves.
  2013, M. T., A Sponsorship Guide for 12-Step Programs, page 120
2. (informal, of a document, usually in the plural) Clipping of amendment (“alteration or change for the better”).

Definition of "amend"

amend

verb

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noun

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