"vindictive, full of desire to inflict injury or pain for wrongs received," 1580s; see revenge (n.) + -ful. Related: Revengefully; revengefulness.
Entries linking to revengeful
revenge n.
"retaliation for wrongs real or fancied, act of doing harm or injury in return for wrong or injury suffered," 1540s, from French revenge, a back-formation from revengier (see revenge (v.)). Hence "vindictive feeling, desire to be revenged."
-ful
word-forming element attached to nouns (and in modern English to verb stems) and meaning "full of, having, characterized by," also "amount or volume contained" (handful, bellyful); from Old English -full, -ful, which is full (adj.) become a suffix by being coalesced with a preceding noun, but originally a separate word. Cognate with German -voll, Old Norse -fullr, Danish -fuld. Most English -ful adjectives at one time or another had both passive ("full of x") and active ("causing x; full of occasion for x") senses.
It is rare in Old English and Middle English, where full was much more commonly attached at the head of a word (for example Old English fulbrecan "to violate," fulslean "to kill outright," fulripod "mature;" Middle English had ful-comen "attain (a state), realize (a truth)," ful-lasting "durability," ful-thriven "complete, perfect," etc.).