avenger

American  

[uh-ven-jer] / əˈvɛn dʒər /

noun

1. a person who takes revenge for an offense.

   They feel that by engaging in terrorism they become the avengers of a great wrong done to their people.

2. a person who takes revenge on behalf of someone else.

   In the film, Zorro sees himself as the avenger of the innocent.

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Etymology

Origin of avenger

aveng(e) ( def. ) + -er ¹ ( def. )

Explanation

A person who seeks revenge can be called an avenger. If you pay your brother back for eating all the cookies by finishing the last of his ice cream, you are an avenger of sorts. You may have heard of the comic book, TV, and movie superheroes called "The Avengers," but they're only one group of famous literary avengers. You could also call Shakespeare's Hamlet, who gets revenge for his father's death, an avenger. Most of the characters in the Greek classic "The Iliad" are avengers, too. The Old French root, avengier, means "to take revenge."

Example Sentences

Later, its soft intoning of “The world’s avenger is no more” embodied the mourning and loss of hope after the death of Hercules.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 18, 2026

This time around, the wraithlike Bill Skarsgård is our back-from-the-dead avenger.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 23, 2024

Furiosa’s reticence is strategic, as well as a trait she shares with Mad Max himself, the model for her taciturn avenger.

From New York Times • May 17, 2024

Constructed out of Japan’s postwar atomic-bomb trauma, the King of the Monsters has proven a remarkably malleable character, playing environmental protector or atomic avenger with equal aplomb.

From Scientific American • Nov. 3, 2023

So where does he get off to call me a public avenger and a sadist and everything?

From "Twelve Angry Men" by Reginald Rose