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Glite Dictionary
to make peace

to make peace

89 3.4
To stop arguing and become friendly again
  • phrasal verb
  • /meɪk piːs/
translation icon : hacer las paces
  • After years of arguing, they finally decided to make peace and restore their friendship.
  • make peace with Israel
  • make peace with the Palestinians
  • make peace with Arab states

When are you guys going to make peace for the sake of your child?

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Examples

  • Well, it turned out they were willing to make peace with Israel.

    Big Think

  • And I want to make peace.

    The Bricklayer (2023)

  • I kind of wanted to make peace with my dad.

  • What are some ways that people can start to make peace with their financial past?

  • It's taken a long time to sort of make peace and for everything to to be OK.

  • Listen, you need to make peace with all of this

    Blood Cell (2019)

  • So we decide we must make peace.

    Bob Marley: One Love (2024)

  • Let's try to figure out how to make peace with this.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • And my father and I have made peace and it's a lifelong process.

  • Why is Israel reluctant to make peace with the Palestinians?

    Academic text (2009)

Synonyms

to reconcile
vsto make peace
38 5.1

To become friendly again after a disagreement

emphasizes ending conflict and restoring harmony rather than only solving issues
to resolve conflicts
vsto make peace
5 3.4

To find a fair way to end a disagreement between people

is about ending conflict and restoring friendship rather than only finding solutions
to settle a disagreement
vsto make peace
1 3.1

Make people or groups agree after an argument

focuses on ending conflict and restoring friendly relations rather than only making agreement
to sheathe the sword
vsto make peace
8.2

Stop fighting and try to be friends again

is the ordinary expression for ending conflict and restoring friendship

Antonyms

to escalate
220 5.5

To become larger, more serious, or more intense

to war
7 5.9

To fight a long armed conflict against another country or group

to inflame tensions
  • Literature
1 7.4

Make people more angry and cause conflict between groups

How Reconciled

to make peace
89 3.4
to patch up
25 3.5
to settle
596 3.3

Surface Forms

make peace infinitive
made peace past
made peace past participle
making peace present participle
makes peace third person singular

Morphology

make + peace

The meaning 'to end a conflict and restore friendly relations' is directly and compositionally derived from 'make' (to cause) + 'peace' (friendly relations), i.e., to cause peace. This causative-noun combination is cross-linguistically common (e.g., Spanish 'hacer la paz', French 'faire la paix') and follows a standard English pattern, so a B1 learner who knows the words will readily understand it.

Etymology

Make peace comes from the simple image of people actually 'making' an agreement called peace, for example by signing a paper or shaking hands after a fight. That's why make peace means 'to end a conflict and be friendly'.