amend

Formsamends, amending, amended

Pluralamends

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To make a formal alteration to legislation, a report, or a similar document by adding, deleting, or rephrasing parts.

   Congress amended the statute to close a tax loophole.

   The board moved to amend the proposal before the final vote.

   Similarrevise, modify, alter, change, rewrite

   Note

   Parliamentary and committee procedure is where this sense works hardest. People amend an Act, a bill, a motion or a report, and the change itself is an amendment. Henry Martyn Robert's Robert's Rules of Order (1876) lists motions that "cannot be amended," because the right to amend is itself governed by rules. In Hansard in 1990, Doug Hoyle argues for amending an Act to preserve its original spirit.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To improve something by changing or correcting what is wrong with it.

   The new policy did much to amend working conditions at the plant.

   Years of careful practice amended her technique considerably.

   Similarimprove, better, reform, correct, refine

   Oppositeworsen, impair

   Note

   Latin ēmendō meant "to free from faults," from ex "out of" and mendum "fault," and the idea of taking an error out still shapes this sense. The word came through Old French amender. Emend is its doublet, and mend is a clipped form of it. The American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897) shows a common use: "I will have to amend that," said of correcting one's own statement.

3. 3
   verbintransitive

   To improve of one's own accord; to grow better in character or condition.

   He promised his temper would amend with patience and effort.

   Her health amended slowly through the spring.

   Similarimprove, mend

   Oppositeworsen, deteriorate, decline

4. 4
   noun

   An act that rights a wrong or compensates for harm done.

   The company made amends to the families affected by the spill.

   No amends could undo the damage to her reputation.

   Similarreparation, restitution, redress, atonement, compensation

   Note

   The noun nearly always appears in the plural, most familiarly in make amends. The singular has a long history too: John Elihu Hall's American Law Journal (1813) records a Visigothic penalty of "an amend in gold." Twelve-step recovery writing has revived it for a single act of repair, as in A Sponsorship Guide for 12-Step Programs (2013): "the point of an amend" is to make it right.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialabbreviationclipping

   Clipping of amendment.

   The client came back with a long list of amends to the second draft.

   The editor accepted every amend the author proposed.

   Note

   Here the word is office shorthand: someone sends back a draft "with some amends," meaning the changes to be made. It belongs to working documents and casual talk. For a change to a bill or a constitution, people expect the full word amendment. The plural looks identical to the making-up-for-a-wrong noun, but context tells them apart: amends on a draft are edits, not apologies.

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