Other forms: repented, repents, repenting
To repent is to be sorry for wrongdoing and turn away from it. Repent of your sins, repent and be forgiven, too late to repent.
The turning is the point: repentance is regret plus a change of direction, which is what distinguishes it from simply feeling bad. It is chiefly religious vocabulary and central to Christian and Jewish teaching about forgiveness. The preposition is of. Note repentance, repentant, and unrepentant, which is used far more often than the positive and means still entirely unsorry.
1verbrepentTo be sorry for wrongdoing and turn away from it.
“The preacher told the crowd to repent before it was too late.”
repent is a turning from wrongdoing.
Latin paenitere means to cause regret, from paene, almost — the sense of falling short. Penitent, penance and repent all descend from it, and the re- adds a turning back.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₁-
la-cla
paeniteo
Latin
paenitīre
Vulgar Latin
*repaenitīre
Old French
repentir
Middle English
repenten
English, today
repent
From Middle English repenten, from Old French repentir, from Vulgar Latin repaenitīre, from Latin paenitīre, from la-cla paeniteo. Compare Modern French repentir.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA