Pronounced: ACK-sih-dense, noun
Notes: Not at all what I thought it was
Yesterday’s word
The word revanche means “revenge; especially a policy (usually political) designed to recover lost territory or status”
First usage
Our word appeared in English in the mid-1800s
Background / Comments
I have never heard this word for revenge. It came from the Middle French word revenchier (to revenge); it got its specific political application after the Franco-German War (1870-1871), which France lost the Alsace-Lorraine territory to Germany. France got the territory back after World War I, and then it changed hands a couple of times during World War II. It is pretty rare to run across revanche; it is more likely to find the related word revanchism (referring to a government’s policy of revanche) or revanchist (a follower of such a policy).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 