REQUITE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does requite mean? 

• REQUITE (verb)
  The verb REQUITE has 1 sense:

1. make repayment for or return something

  Familiarity information: REQUITE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• REQUITE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they requite    ... he / she / it requites   
Past simple: requited   
Past participle: requited   
-ing form: requiting   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make repayment for or return something

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Synonyms:

repay; requite

Hypernyms (to "requite" is one way to...):

give (transfer possession of something concrete or abstract to somebody)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "requite"):

pay (make a compensation for)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

requital (an act of requiting; returning in kind)

 Context examples 

The kindness of my uncle and aunt can never be requited.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“Is he fickle? Oh, for shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his passion requited? Is her name Polly?”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

She was their earliest visitor in their settled life; and Captain Wentworth, by putting her in the way of recovering her husband's property in the West Indies, by writing for her, acting for her, and seeing her through all the petty difficulties of the case with the activity and exertion of a fearless man and a determined friend, fully requited the services which she had rendered, or ever meant to render, to his wife.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

To her I chiefly owe my preservation in that country: we never parted while I was there; I called her my Glumdalclitch, or little nurse; and should be guilty of great ingratitude, if I omitted this honourable mention of her care and affection towards me, which I heartily wish it lay in my power to requite as she deserves, instead of being the innocent, but unhappy instrument of her disgrace, as I have too much reason to fear.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In this world the penalty is less equal than could be wished; but without presuming to look forward to a juster appointment hereafter, we may fairly consider a man of sense, like Henry Crawford, to be providing for himself no small portion of vexation and regret: vexation that must rise sometimes to self-reproach, and regret to wretchedness, in having so requited hospitality, so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable, and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom he had rationally as well as passionately loved.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)