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

Its redeeming feature was supposed to be re-establishing freedom of navigation in the Strait while nuclear talks proceeded.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026

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

From Los Angeles Times ● May 6, 2023

If “Intrusion” has one redeeming feature, it’s Marshall-Green, whose performance as the husband with a dark secret has a crackling, tightly controlled intensity far more nuanced and persuasive than anything else in the film.

From New York Times ● Sep. 22, 2021

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

But, in the case of Mary E. Surratt, not a single redeeming feature relieves “The deep damnation of her taking off.”

From The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt by David Miller DeWitt

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