revengeful
Americanadjective
adjective
Usage
What does revengeful mean? Revengeful is used to describe someone who is determined to get revenge—retaliation against or punishment of someone for some kind of harm that they caused or wrongdoing that they did (whether real or perceived). Revengeful also means inclined to seek revenge. The adjective vindictive is a close synonym. A more commonly used synonym is vengeful. Revengeful can be used to describe people or their actions. Revenge often involves an attempt to get even by inflicting similar harm to the person who initially harmed the person seeking revenge. Revenge has several other synonyms that each have different shades of meaning, including retribution, retaliation, and reprisal. But more than these words, revenge implies that such retaliation is personal and motivated by a deep anger and perhaps an obsessive desire to get even. This is usually what it means when someone is described as revengeful. Example: Being revengeful does more damage to you than to the person you are intent on destroying.
Synonym Usage
See spiteful.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of revengeful
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“The real evils in war,” St. Augustine once wrote, are “love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 16, 2025
It’s vulgar and vivacious, big and brutal, full of rivaling monarchies, Machiavellian ministers, feuding families, revengeful prostitutes, evil priests and a century-old witch, all vying for power in James’ extraordinarily imagined African kingdoms.
From Seattle Times • Feb. 25, 2022
“I think it is absolutely essential that we stay focused on how, in this transitional period, nobody loses their head, nobody goes off half-cocked, people don’t start ginning up scatterbrained or revengeful premises,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 27, 2016
"It is absolutely essential that we stay focused on how in this transitional period, nobody loses their head, nobody goes off half-cock, people don't start moving on scatter-brained or revengeful premises," Kerry added.
From Reuters • Jun. 27, 2016
Some of them were fearful, some revengeful for their comrade, some, as it were, disbothed in the sleep-walk of their stealth.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
