revenge [LME] ‘Revenge’, said the 17th-century courtier and scholar Francis Bacon, ‘is a kind of wild justice.’ The idea that wrongs can be most successfully avenged by someone who has taken the time to plan their response is formulated in the proverb first recorded in the late 19th century, revenge is a dish best eaten cold. The word is from Old French revencher, which with an emphatic re- added was from Latin vindicare ‘to claim, avenge’—the root of vindicate [M16th] and avenge [LME].