Other forms: amended, amends, amending
To amend is to formally change a law or a text to improve it. Amend the bill, amend the contract, as amended.
It implies improvement rather than mere alteration, and in legislation it is the technical word: an amendment is a proposed change, and as amended describes the current version. Make amends is a different construction meaning to compensate for a wrong. Note emend, which means to correct a text and is a doublet of amend; and mend, which is the same word worn shorter.
1verbamendTo formally change a law or text to improve it.
“Parliament voted to amend the law to give fathers more paid leave.”
2verbcompensateTo compensate for a wrong, in make amends.
“He sent flowers to make amends for forgetting her birthday.”
amend is a formal changing.
Also accepted in games: revise
Old French amender comes from Latin emendare, to free from fault — ex plus mendum, a fault. Mend is the same word with the first syllable lost.
Proto-Indo-European
*mend-
Latin
ēmendō — free from faults
Old French
amender
Middle English
amenden
English, today
amend
Built from
From Middle English amenden, from Old French amender, from Latin ēmendō (“free from faults”), from ex (“from, out of”) + mendum (“fault”). Compare aphetic mend. a doublet of emend.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA