emend
/ɪˈmɛnd
/verb [with object]
1Make corrections and revisions to (a text): these studies show him collating manuscripts and emending texts...
- The first were the scabini, officials with specific juridical competence, the second were the iudices, responsible for reproducing and emending juridical texts, and finally the custodians of the lay archives.
- Many modern editions, including the Oxford, take the view that the novel in part derives from the play, and use it to emend the defective quarto text.
- But the work shall not be wholly lost: for it will, as he believed, appear once more, in a new and more perfect edition, corrected and emended by another author.
Synonyms
correct, rectify, repair, fix;
improve, enhance, polish, refine, clarify;
edit, alter, rewrite, revise, copy-edit, subedit, amend, change, modify;
redraft, recast, rephrase, reword, rework, rescript;
expurgate, censor, redact, bowdlerize
1.1Alter (something that is incorrect): the year of his death might need to be emended to 652...
- In 1969, Rolfe correctly emended the spellings of the archaeostracan families by inserting id before the familial suffix.
- The guest curator, John Ayers, has written an essay for the catalogue that emends flaws in dating and attribution erroneously accepted as the last word for decades.
- This arrangement was followed by Whittington in the Treatise, but was emended in 1963.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin emendare, from e- (variant of ex-) 'out of' + menda 'a fault'. Compare with amend.
mend from Middle English:
Even though it is found slightly earlier, mend is thought to be a shortening of amend, which along with emend are recorded within a few years of each other. They all go back to Latin emendare ‘to free from faults, correct’.