amends

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Compensation given to make up for an injury or loss; recompense or reparation.

   The company paid amends to the families harmed by the chemical spill.

   He spent years trying to make amends for the trouble he had caused.

   Similarrestitution, redress, reparation, compensation, indemnity

   Note

   Borrowed already plural, from French amendes, the plural of amende, and it still behaves as a plural: amends were made, not amends was made. Its natural home is the phrase make amends for, used of a wrong or of one's share in one, as in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist" (1903). Mends, without the a-, means the same thing.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of amend.

   Note

   Two different nouns stand behind this plural. One is an informal clipping of amendment, so a committee's amends are proposed changes to a text. In formal writing, amendments is the safer choice. The other noun means an act of righting a wrong, and it is normally used in the plural already. That makes its plural effectively the same word as the "reparation" meaning.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of amend.

   The editor amends each draft carefully before it goes to print.

   Whenever an error surfaces, the author amends the relevant passage.

   Note

   A verb that nearly always wants an object: she amends the draft, the council amends its bylaws. Its everyday meaning is formal alteration of a text by adding, deleting or rephrasing. The old senses of healing and recovering are obsolete. Keep he amends his conduct apart from he makes amends, which uses the noun for reparation and needs make.

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