requite
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to make repayment or return for (service, benefits, etc.).
- Synonyms:
- reimburse, remunerate, pay, compensate, recompense, reward, repay
-
to make retaliation for (a wrong, injury, etc.); avenge.
- Synonyms:
- revenge
- Antonyms:
- forgive
-
to make return to (a person, group, etc.) for service, benefits, etc.
-
to retaliate on (a person, group, etc.) for a wrong, injury, etc.
-
to give or do in return.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
requitesimple
-
requitessimple
-
have requitedperfect
-
has requitedperfect
-
am requitingprogressive
-
are requitingprogressive
-
is requitingprogressive
-
have been requitingperfect progressive
-
has been requitingperfect progressive
Past
-
requitedsimple
-
had requitedperfect
-
was requitingprogressive
-
were requitingprogressive
-
had been requitingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of requite
Explanation
You can requite a friend’s kindness by doing your friend a favor or by being kind in return. Requite means "to repay or return." To requite something is to return it. However, saying that you want to requite a gift means that you want to give something in return for it — not that you want to return the gift to the store for some quick cash. Requite is often used in the context of love; if you requite someone’s love, you love that person back. Requite can also be used in a negative sense. Someone who wants to requite an injury wants payback for it.
Vocabulary lists containing requite
The Tragedy of Macbeth
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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
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Beowulf
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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.
See Examples For:
I think that’s every girl’s dream, that this punk who doesn’t really like us and doesn’t really requite our love, that he’s going to change all the sudden.
From Time ● Jan. 28, 2013
Therefore, in "the world as it is," you must requite evil with lesser evil.
From Salon ● Aug. 18, 2011
Did Mr. Anderson requite Ms. McKinney’s love, as she insists?
From New York Times ● Jul. 14, 2011
Preece, for whom he left his first wife, did not requite his passion.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 15, 2010
Replied Odysseus: “The young men, yes. And may the gods requite those insolent puppies for the game they play in a home not their own. They have no decency.”
From "The Odyssey" by Homer
No more, no more, dear mother, say, From many a woman's fortune this truth is clear as day, That falsely smiling Pleasure with Pain requites us ever.
From Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. Essays on Literature, Biography, and Antiquities by Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Though in my Firmament thou wilt not shine Talk not, my Lord, of unrequited love, Since love requites itself most royally.
From Last Poems by Hope, Laurence
I believe that he would be a very different boy if he were relieved from the misery he suffers at home and requites by mischievous pranks.
From A Reputed Changeling Or Three Seventh Years Two Centuries Ago by Yonge, Charlotte Mary
But our little attention requites in a very small degree the obligations which I am under to your noble father’s family.
From The Cambrian Sketch-Book Tales, Scenes, and Legends of Wild Wales by Davies, R. Rice
Since it pleases me naught, I pray to God to grant me death, and—so truly as I have loved him who requites me thus—to have mercy on my soul.
From French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France by France, Marie de
They show us the way we try to escape an unsatisfying present through speculative fictions about how our suffering will eventually be redeemed through requited love or satisfying work or, failing those, God’s mercy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 2022
But there's a parallel thread of romance... a story of unrequited love that slowly became very requited indeed.
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2022
But there’s something more that’s driving interest in Bennifer: the storybook nature of long-lost love requited.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 4, 2021
For good measure, the book is a love story, a requited one between fan and muse, delivering a hero from Texas with architecturally stupendous hair: Lyle Lovett.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 8, 2020
I’m sure I said it would be O.K., although all I remember as I ran down the hill was thinking: Oh, I’m in love, I’m in love, and I think it’s requited!
From "Homesick" by Jean Fritz
Not requiting any encouragement to get out of his seat was Fernandez's fitness coach, who would leap and shout, pointing fingers or waving clenched fists.
From Fox News ● Sep. 7, 2021
And yet, among the human lovers, she is perhaps the most active, from when she betrays her friend to score points with Demetrius, her formerly requiting unrequited crush.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2020
The beloved proletariat, so requiting during hard times, had, at first opportunity, run off with capitalism's traveling salesman.
From Time Magazine Archive
Romans on finding out his absence took courage and turned their attention to requiting those who had invited him.
We were certainly a pair of vagrants, if ever there was a pair in the world, and were certainly come to get something of the parson that we had no means of requiting him for.
From The Wayfarers by Snaith, J. C.
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.
