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PlainSpell

revanchism

/ɹəˈvɑnt͡ʃɪz(ə)m/noun

revanchism is a noun meaning “The political policy of endeavouring to regain lost territory” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-E-V-A-N-C-H-I-S-M, and it appears about once in every 29 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of revanchism is revanchisms.

What does revanchism mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The political policy of endeavouring to regain lost territory.

  2. 2

    Metaphorical endeavouring to regain lost political or cultural territory.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce revanchism?

  • UK /ɹɪˈvæn(t)ʃɪz(ə)m/
  • US /ɹəˈvɑnt͡ʃɪz(ə)m/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-revanchism.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of revanchism

  • revanchisms plural
  • revanchisme

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is revanchism?

Revanchism appears about once in every 29 million words in written English, the 163,711th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Revanchism in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense political policy of endeavouring to regain lost territory:

LanguageWords
Frenchrevanchisme
GermanRevanchismus
Portugueserevanchismo
Spanishrevanchismo

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does revanchism come from?

From the French revanche (“revenge”) + -ism, based on revanchisme. By surface analysis, revanche + -ism. Piecewise doublet of revengism.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).