These words refer to the change made in something to restore it or to set it right. Repair emphasizes work done on an object that is broken, damaged or not in proper working order: to repair a TV set; to repair shoes; the expense of having an old car repaired . By extension, it can refer to any effective restorative action: ambassadors who worked to repair the breach in trade relations. Fix is an informal word for the same set of meanings as repair : the time it took him to fix the leaking tap. But while repair usually suggests a broken object to begin with, fix can apply to anything that needs attention or has gone awry: fixing curtains for the bare windows; a friend who could fix things between the girl and her angry parents. Mend suggests the repairing of something broken, torn or worn threadbare: a torn page mended with tape; to mend old clothes. But it can go beyond this to suggest a growing together, a knitting and healing of injured parts in living things: tying the bent branch in place until it could mend ; splinting the leg until the broken bone began the mend . Thus, it may suggest a return to health and peace in wider contexts: anxious to mend the rift between the two warring factions within his party.

The remaining words apply less often to the concrete context of a broken object and are both more general and more vague in referring to steps taken to improve something imperfect or to better a bad situation. Correct suggests the supplying of right answers or the pointing out of errors: a special teacher to correct his halting mispronunciations: parents unwilling to correct and discipline their own children. A pedagogical atmosphere is, in fact, often suggested by the word. Remedy more obviously suggests a medical situation, but it appears in a wide range of contexts, implying an effort to find solutions to troublesome or difficult problems: steps taken to remedy the conditions that precipitated the riot. The word may suggest alterations in a system rather than a complete reorganization: They hoped to remedy their lacklustre performance by a few changes in personnel. The word often suggests a search for one out of many possible solutions, unlike correct , which gives the impression that a simple, right-and-wrong dichotomy exists.

Rectify , by contrast, stresses a more thoroughgoing change in something; one rectifies something wrong by setting it right, in so far as amendment is possible: to rectify a factual error; finally rectifying a miscarriage of justice. It is the most formal of these words and, in the sense discussed here, the most abstract. Renovate applies strictly to the repairing and modernizing of an old building: a programme to renovate slum housing. Sometimes, the word can apply to the less desirable modernizing of a venerable or distinctive building merely because it is old or thought out of date: a committee set up to protest the proposal to renovate a row of 19th-century houses in the street. Do up is a casual, informal expression commonly used in the sense of renovate , but it can apply also to smaller items: They did up the house before the tenants moved in; I’ll do up your bicycle in no time at all.