Reading the news

Revendiquer un acte is what a news bulletin says when somebody owns up to an attack, and the verb comes out of a courtroom. Behind it stands the Latin vindicare, to lay legal claim to a thing, and French took that root twice. Once through ordinary speech, where it wore down into venger, to avenge; once through the lawyers, who rebuilt it as revendiquer, to claim what is yours — une revendication is still what a striker paints on a banner, and revendiquer un droit is to demand one. English has all three doors. « Avenge » and « revenge » arrived from old French and kept the blood; « vindicate » was taken straight from the Latin and kept the argument, so that a claim is proved rather than avenged; and « vindictive » went back to the blood again. So a group that revendique un attentat is, in the grammar of the word, neither boasting nor confessing: it is a claimant stepping forward to say that this thing belongs to it, which is exactly what the Roman verb meant.