Amend vs Alter - What's the difference?
amend | alter |
To make better.
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1
, passage=I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore kilts. But I see I will have to amend that, because he was not a celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I left New York for the West.}}
* Shakespeare
* Sir Walter Scott
To become better.
(obsolete) To heal (someone sick); to cure (a disease etc.).
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , III.x:
*, II.2.6.ii:
To make a formal alteration in legislation by adding, deleting, or rephrasing.
To change the form or structure of.
* Bible, Psalms lxxxix. 34
* Shakespeare
* Alexander Pope
To become different.
To tailor clothes to make them fit.
To castrate, neuter or spay (a dog or other animal).
(obsolete) To agitate; to affect mentally.
Alter is a synonym of amend.
In transitive terms the difference between amend and alter
is that amend is to make a formal alteration in legislation by adding, deleting, or rephrasing while alter is to castrate, neuter or spay (a dog or other animal).In intransitive terms the difference between amend and alter
is that amend is to become better while alter is to become different.amend
English
Verb
(en verb)- Mar not the thing that cannot be amended .
- We shall cheer her sorrows, and amend her blood, by wedding her to a Norman.
- But Paridell complaynd, that his late fight / With Britomart, so sore did him offend, / That ryde he could not, till his hurts he did amend .
- he gave her a vomit, and conveyed a serpent, such as she conceived, into the basin; upon the sight of it she was amended .
Synonyms
* ameliorate * correct * improve * See also * See alsoReferences
* *Anagrams
*alter
English
Alternative forms
* altre (obsolete)Verb
(en verb)- My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.
- No power in Venice can alter a decree.
- It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
- (Milton)