redeeming feature

Idioms  

1. A good quality or aspect that makes up for other drawbacks, as in The house isn't very attractive, but the garden is the redeeming feature. This idiom, first recorded in 1827, uses redeem in the sense of “compensate.”

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

redeeming feature

“I couldn’t find a single redeeming feature about this utterly loathsome figure.”

From Los Angeles Times ● May 6, 2023

The news quickly trended on social media, with tributes saluting the "most famous tree in Australian education" as "majestic" and the university's "only redeeming feature".

From BBC ● Oct. 31, 2016

We end with the debate’s redeeming feature, which surprisingly had to do with God.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2016

Our critic says its main redeeming feature is Denzel Washington, “a great star, which means that he has that ineluctable what’s-it for selling the goods no matter what their sell-by date.”

From New York Times ● Sep. 23, 2016

Indeed, she seemed to be quite a reformer, apparently holding firmly, while uttering cautiously, the liberal political sentiments which constituted the redeeming feature in her husband's character.

From Sketches of Reforms and Reformers, of Great Britain and Ireland by Stanton, Henry B.