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.”

---

Example Sentences

“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

Its only redeeming feature is that the words are so tiny I can’t read them.

From Washington Post • Dec. 31, 2020

The microphone is good One redeeming feature that the Earphones HD have is a high-quality microphone, which I was told during testing made me sound very clear and easily understandable.

From The Verge • Feb. 8, 2018

Moejy, in my opinion, had only one redeeming feature: a tendency to spend most of his time at the Auto Haven Motel half a mile west of us.

From Four and Twenty Beds by Vogel, Nancy