Verb

(head)

(archaic) (mend)

Verb

(en verb)

To repair, as anything that is torn, broken, defaced, decayed, or the like; to restore from partial decay, injury, or defacement; to patch up; to put in shape or order again; to re-create; as, to mend a garment or a machine.

My trousers have a big rip in them and need mending .

When your car breaks down, you can take it to the garage to have it mended .

To alter for the better; to set right; to reform; hence, to quicken; as, to mend one's manners or pace.

Her stutter was mended by a speech therapist.

My broken heart was mended .

* Sir W. Temple

The best service they could do the state was to mend the lives of the persons who composed it.

To help, to advance, to further; to add to.

* Mortimer

Though in some lands the grass is but short, yet it mends garden herbs and fruit.

* Shakespeare

You mend the jewel by wearing it.

To grow better; to advance to a better state; to become improved.

Verb

(head)

(archaic) (amend)

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.