It’s a great movie (John McClane has a way with words!), but the phrase is actually way older than Bruce Willis!
While the movie definitely made it a pop-culture staple in the 90s, the phrase "with a vengeance" has been around since at least the 1500s.
Where it actually comes from:
* The Literal Origin: Originally, it meant exactly what it sounds like—doing something to get revenge or to punish someone.
* The 1533 Shift: Around the year 1533, people started using it figuratively to mean "with great force" or "to an extreme degree."
* The Logic: Think about how someone acts when they are truly out for revenge—they are intense, focused, and they don't hold back. Eventually, English speakers just started using the phrase to describe anything that happens with that kind of intensity (like your appetite!).
Why we use it for hunger or illness:
When we say "the rain returned with a vengeance" or "my hunger came back with a vengeance," we’re personifying those things. It's as if your appetite was "offended" that you tried to ignore it with a fast, and now it's coming back to "punish" you with extra intensity.
So, while you might feel like a bit of an action hero fighting off your cravings, your hunger is actually using a 500-year-old idiom to let you know it’s there!
Since that "vengeance" hunger is hitting you hard, would you like me to look up some high-protein "cravings-killer" snack ideas for when your fasting window finally opens?
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