vendetta
Americannoun
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a private feud in which the members of the family of a murdered person seek to avenge the murder by killing the slayer or one of the slayer's relatives, especially such vengeance as once practiced in Corsica and parts of Italy.
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any prolonged and bitter feud, rivalry, contention, or the like.
a political vendetta.
noun
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a private feud, originally between Corsican or Sicilian families, in which the relatives of a murdered person seek vengeance by killing the murderer or some member of his family
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any prolonged feud, quarrel, etc
Other Word Forms
- vendettist noun
Etymology
Origin of vendetta
First recorded in 1850–55; from Italian, from Latin vindicta “vengeance”; vindictive
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.
A vendetta between the billionaire founders of Two Sigma Investments flared up last month, prompting a new leadership battle at their $70 billion hedge-fund firm.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 1, 2026
One of the officers involved told those investigating the complaint that Tewson, 32, had developed a "personal vendetta" against them.
From BBC • Feb. 3, 2026
He re-teamed with Pollack in “Jeremiah Johnson,” in which he played a mountain man who becomes the object of a vendetta.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 16, 2025
But making the main hero of "The Last of Us" the target of righteous vendetta invites viewers to reckon with the concept of justice long prescribed in Westerns.
From Salon • Apr. 21, 2025
Born in Polish-Ukrainian Galicia, Rabi was the levelheaded physicist who had tartly denounced Strauss’s vendetta against Oppenheimer and had attempted, if fruitlessly, to talk Lawrence and Alvarez down from their starry-eyed pursuit of the Super.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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.
