with a vengeance

With increased energy, intensity, passion, or determination, as if driven by anger. After my girlfriend dumped me, I started working out with a vengeance. We're going to have to clean with a vengeance to get the house ready in time. The painkillers helped for a while, but then my headache came back with a vengeance.

Fig. to do something with vigor; to do something energetically as if one were angry. Bob is building that fence with a vengeance. Mary is really weeding her garden with a vengeance.

Cliché with determination and eagerness. The angry soldier attacked the enemy with a vengeance. Bill ate all his dinner and gobbled up his dessert with a vengeance.

With great violence or energy; also, to an extreme degree. For example, The cottage was filthy and Ruth began cleaning with a vengeance, or December has turned cold with a vengeance. This expression was first recorded in 1533. Also see with a will.

Forcefully, extremely hard. Vengeance in this old expression is not the same as “revenge” (see also revenge is sweet). It was already in print in 1533, in the same meaning it has today. “Be gone quickly, or my pikestaff and I will set thee away with a vengeance,” wrote George Peele (King Edward I, 1593).