Make Your Editor Cry: Extract Revenge vs. Exact Revenge
According to Webster, “Exact,” when used as a verb, means to “demand, claim, require, exact” or “to ask or call for something as due or as necessary.”
When you “extract” something, you remove it, often by means of processing such as distillation or heat. For example, vanilla extract is a product of extracting the vanillin oils from the vanilla bean using grain alcohol.
The correct phrase is to “exact revenge.”
Example:
Thomas decided to exact revenge by surreptitiously placing a computer virus on Scott’s machine that destroyed the hard drive.
Gregg Bridgeman is the Editor-in-Chief at Olivia Kimbrell Press. He is husband to best-selling Christian author Hallee Bridgeman and parent to three. He continues to proudly serve in the US Armed Forces and has done so in either an active or reserve capacity for more than twenty years as an airborne and air assault qualified paratrooper, earning a Bronze Star for his service. Most importantly, he was ordained in October of 2001 after surrendering his life to Christ decades earlier.