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
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.
Thou Sun! whose lustre all things here below Surveys; and Juno! conscious of my woe; Revengeful Furies! and Queen Hecate!
From Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham by Denham, John, Sir
Revengeful and cruel, dauntless and bold, as he had ever been, the present seemed a crisis in his life.
From Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue by Ashton, Warren T.
Can a man of great worth, and that deserves well, be Vain, Proud, Revengeful, Ungrateful to his Friend, False to his Master, and impertinently Ambitious in his very Retreat from all Publick Affairs?
They relent not; They pardon not; they are implacable, Revengeful, unforgiving!
From The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
I was always a Dangerous, but I was never a Revengeful man.
From The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave among the moors... by Sala, George Augustus
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.
