requite
/rɪˈkwʌɪt
/verb [with object] formal
1Make appropriate return for (a favour, service, or wrongdoing): they are quick to requite a kindness...
- Because of this expectation that the accepter will somehow requite the gift, Scripture tells us to be very selective in accepting gifts.
- The next line in Moses's Song takes up the image: ‘Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise?’
Synonyms
avenge, exact revenge for, revenge, retaliate for, pay someone back for;
get/have/take one's revenge, take reprisals, settle old scores, settle the score with someone, take an eye for an eye (and a tooth for a tooth), give tit for tat, get even, give someone their just deserts, give someone a dose/taste of their own medicine, give as good as one gets, give like for like
1.1Return a favour to (someone): to win enough to requite my friends...
- Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not requite man according to his work?
Synonyms
return, reciprocate, match;
reward, repay, recompense
archaic guerdon
1.2Respond to (love or affection): she did not requite his love...
- She is someone who has fallen in love and who cannot believe that such love can be requited.
- This was hard on Thompson, who, a few years earlier, had dug up an entire bed of irises in his mother's garden as an attempted exorcism of his insufficiently requited love for her.
- A couple of scenes later, her unrequited love has been requited, and the two of them are in bed together.
Synonyms
reciprocate, return, feel/give in return
Derivatives
requital
- I have taken a strong position against schemes of extortion from the fellow citizens of people here in America, based on the idea that somehow or another that would be requital for slavery.
- You still desire the satisfaction of revenge as requital for the pain you felt.
- We saw earlier that, although human punishment does not bear the full burden of requiting good and evil, it must hold up requital as an ideal.
Synonyms
repayment, reward, return, payment, recompense, reparation
revenge, vengeance, retribution, retaliation, redress, satisfaction;
Latin quid pro quo
Origin
Early 16th century: from re- 'back' + obsolete quite, variant of the verb quit1.