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Improve vs Amend - What's the difference?

improve | amend | Synonyms |

Amend is a synonym of improve.



In transitive terms the difference between improve and amend

is that improve is to make (something) better; to increase the value or productivity (of something) while amend is to make a formal alteration in legislation by adding, deleting, or rephrasing.

In intransitive terms the difference between improve and amend

is that improve is to become better while amend is to become better.

improve

English

Alternative forms

* emprove (obsolete)

Verb

(improv)
  • (lb) To make (something) better; to increase the value or productivity (of something).
  • :
  • :
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=70, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Engineers of a different kind , passage=Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.}}
  • (lb) To become better.
  • :
  • :
  • *
  • *:“My Continental prominence is improving ,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”
  • (lb) To disprove or make void; to refute.
  • *(William Tyndale) (1494-1536)
  • *:Neither can any of them make so strong a reason which another cannot improve .
  • (lb) To disapprove of; to find fault with; to reprove; to censure.
  • :
  • :(Chapman)
  • *(William Tyndale) (1494-1536)
  • *:When he rehearsed his preachings and his doing unto the high apostles, they could improve nothing.
  • (lb) To use or employ to good purpose; to turn to profitable account.
  • :
  • *(Isaac Barrow) (1630-1677)
  • *:We shall especially honour God by improving diligently the talents which God hath committed to us.
  • *(Joseph Addison) (1672-1719)
  • *:a hint that I do not remember to have seen opened and improved
  • *(William Blackstone) (1723-1780)
  • *:The court seldom fails to improve the opportunity.
  • *(Isaac Watts) (1674-1748)
  • *:How doth the little busy bee / Improve each shining hour.
  • *(George Washington) (1732-1799)
  • *:True policy, as well as good faith, in my opinion, binds us to improve the occasion.
  • Synonyms

    * (to make something better) ameliorate, better, batten, enhance * See also

    Antonyms

    * (to make something worse) deteriorate, worsen * (to become worse) deteriorate, worsen

    Derived terms

    * improvement

    amend

    English

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • 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
  • Mar not the thing that cannot be amended .
  • * Sir Walter Scott
  • We shall cheer her sorrows, and amend her blood, by wedding her to a Norman.
  • To become better.
  • (obsolete) To heal (someone sick); to cure (a disease etc.).
  • * 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , III.x:
  • 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 .
  • *, II.2.6.ii:
  • he gave her a vomit, and conveyed a serpent, such as she conceived, into the basin; upon the sight of it she was amended .
  • To make a formal alteration in legislation by adding, deleting, or rephrasing.
  • Synonyms

    * ameliorate * correct * improve * See also * See also

    References

    * *

    Anagrams

    *