with a vengeance

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with a vengeance

1. (idiomatic) With an intense motivation; in an extreme, intense, or violent manner.
   • 1651, Samuel Clarke, A General Martyrologie, Underhill (London), ch. 27 "The Original Progress and Practice of the Spanish Inquisition," p. 209:

     With which intolerable pains if the party shriek or cry out, they roar out as loud to him to confess the truth, or else he shall come down with a vengeance.

   • 1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal:

     Yes, egad, they are tenacious of reputation with a vengeance, for they don't choose anybody should have a character but themselves!

   • 1779, “Miscellaneous Essays: From Dr. Beattie's Essay on Music and Poetry”, in Edmund Burke, editor, The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1778, London: Dodsley:

     It is said, that in the first representation of the Furies of Eschylus, the horror of the spectacle was so great, that several women miscarried; which was indeed pathos with a vengeance.

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 16, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.

   • 1966 Sep, Charles A. Berst, “Propaganda and Art in Mrs Warren's Profession”, in ELH, volume 33, number 3, page 404:

     From the first, she is the New Woman with a vengeance, loving nothing better than a chair, whisky, cigars and a detective story.

• (modifying a noun postpositively): intense
• (as an adverb): intensely, violently

• “with a vengeance”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “with a vengeance” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.