redemptive
Americanadjective
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serving to redeem.
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of, relating to, or centering on redemption or salvation.
redemptive religions.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of redemptive
First recorded in 1640–50; redempt(ion) + -ive
Explanation
Anything redemptive saves someone from making a mistake or being evil. Many people describe love as redemptive, healing even those who have done terrible things in the past. The adjective redemptive comes from the noun redemption, and both words have historically been used in a religious way, to mean "delivering (or saving) from sin" or "deliverance from sin." Saving someone's mortal soul, in other words, is redemptive. The Latin root, redimere, means "to get back" or "to buy back."
Vocabulary lists containing redemptive
"I Have a Dream" by Martin Luther King Jr.
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Vocabulary from texts about the 1963 March on Washington
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myPerspectives 9.3
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
That arc—and its thematic concern with the relationship-rending pressures of commercial success—replays itself here through the plot’s time-traveling machinations, but this time it’s given a happier ending, a redemptive lesson in the value of friendship.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 12, 2026
“There’s this language of the discarded thing. The language of transformation and redemption. This all feels very redemptive to me.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2025
There is no way to make the social revolution America is experiencing painless, but it is still in our power to make it redemptive.
From Salon ● Jun. 24, 2025
Adoption among these organizations is still talked of as a being a redemptive choice.
From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2025
And if every sadness, when it came, turned out at least to be redemptive in the end.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
