vengeance

plural vengeances · alternative obsolete vengeaunce

1. countableuncountableRevenge taken for an insult, injury, or other wrong.

   All the gods have mocked at prayer. This sin must now be punished by the vengeance of men.

   1906, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], Time and the Gods, London: William Heineman, →OCLC, page 28

   2 more examples

   My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North; General of the Felix Legions; loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius; father to a murdered son; husband to a murdered wife; and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

   2000, Gladiator (film)

   Penn: I don't want to invest in the conversation, not that I don't have it privately, about my feelings about what direct action should happen to a leader who does that, but if there is a God, there will be vengeance beyond all possible comprehension. Hannity: "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord", quoted in a very famous book.

   2022 April 5, Sean Hannity, Sean Penn, 22:33 from the start, in Sean Penn joins Sean Hannity to discuss Russian invasion of Ukraine (Hannity), Fox News, archived from the original on 11 Apr 2022

2. countableuncountableDesire for revenge.

   If her husband was all forgiveness, asking the bands to play “Dixie,” she was full of vengeance […]

   2008, Jean Harvey Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Thereupon full of anger, full of jealousy, full of vengeance, she forms […] a scheme of retribution, […]

   1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC

   Are they full of vengeance[?], because they say that people with vengeance in their hearts must dig two graves, one for their enemy and the other for themselves.

   2011, James Calloway, Black America, Not in This America, →ISBN