Vendetta

How to spell vendetta

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce vendetta

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vendetta mean?

1. nounA prolonged and bitter campaign of revenge or hostility against a person or group.

Vendetta in a sentence

• The two families carried on a vendetta that lasted for decades.

• The journalist accused the senator of pursuing a personal vendetta against her.

Where does vendetta come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word came into English directly from Italian in the early 1800s, where vendetta meant a blood feud, especially the deadly cycle of revenge killings associated with families in Corsica and Sardinia. The Italian noun descends from the Latin vindicta, which meant 'vengeance' or 'the act of avenging', and that in turn was built on vindicare, meaning 'to claim, to set free, or to punish'. The same Latin vindicare lies behind the modern English words 'vindicate' and 'vengeance', so the family resemblance is no accident. English writers borrowed vendetta to describe a prolonged, bitter feud, and over time the sense softened from literal blood feuds to any sustained campaign of hostility, such as a personal or political grudge. The spelling keeps the original Italian shape intact, including the doubled t, which is the detail most likely to trip an adult writer.

How the word is built

• vendere/vindicta root: vendetta from Latin vindicta (vengeance)
• Italian -etta noun ending