saving grace


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saving grace

A redeeming quality of something or someone. The only saving grace about that house is the large eat-in kitchen. Aunt Gertrude's incessant talking can be annoying, but her kindness is her saving grace—I know that she would help us with anything, no questions asked.
See also: grace, saving

saving grace

Cliché the one thing that saves or redeems someone or something that would otherwise be a total disaster. Her saving grace is that she has a lot of money. The saving grace for the whole evening was the good music played by the band.
See also: grace, saving

saving grace, a

A redeeming quality, especially one compensating for drawbacks or negative characteristics. For example, She may not be too knowledgeable, but her saving grace is that she doesn't pretend to be . This term, dating from the late 1500s, at first referred to the concept of being saved from eternal damnation, and was used more loosely only from the late 1800s on.
See also: saving

a saving grace

COMMON A saving grace is a good quality or feature in someone or something that prevents them from being completely bad or worthless. He was bad-tempered and deeply opinionated but he had one saving grace: he assembled one of the greatest private art collections of this century. It's an excellent performance and one of the film's few saving graces.
See also: grace, saving

a ˌsaving ˈgrace

a quality which prevents somebody/something from being completely bad: She can be difficult at times. Her saving grace is her sense of humour.
See also: grace, saving
References in periodicals archive ?
SAVING Grace is a personal/business concierge service started by CEO/Founder Grace Keller.
SAVING Grace Set to Host Holiday Shopping Event to Benefit Charity
In addition to school bags, Saving Grace also accepts unused school uniforms.
If your old bag is clean, donate it, students urged
When they work, they work, and when they don't, there's clearly no saving grace.
EUAN MACDONALD
And that may be a saving grace for the property/casualty industry.
Looking Ahead
The saving grace of the content-deprived Free Radicals might well have been the quality of the dancers and the energy of their performances: Murphy certainly gives them a fair amount of Dionysiac stomping about to the supposedly pulse-raising percussive beat.
Free Radicals
Save" campaign is a partnership between the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD), UAE Red Crescent Authority's Saving Grace and Quattro Group's Mocha cafes and restaurants.
Have some grace, don't waste food
Ponting's saving grace is the lack of any credible replacements.
Critics have a field day with Punter; RESULT!
I don''t think there could be a clearer demonstration of the contempt our MPs have for public opinion, and the only saving grace is that the feeling is mutual.
Meaningless; Your view
Ironically, 44-year-old Tatum - the son of Hollywood tough guy actor Ryan O'Neal - has just finished making a telly movie called Saving Grace, in which she plays a crackpot who is released from an asylum.
DENIS TO TATUM RESCUE
Saving Grace raises many questions about teen parenting and paints an intensely sharp picture of the problems faced by kids who have kids.
Ryan, Darlene. Saving Grace
The only saving grace was that England did not use this money to go on a spending spree but to subsidise her domestic lifestyle.
Editorial Comment Cruel abuse of our trust
Perhaps the only saving grace is the fact that the sides below the Blues are playing worse.
Sports Letters: Toothless up front
The saving grace is the brilliant power steering which is both direct and sensitive.
Saving grace
Cragg is the greatest sculptor of the power of desire since Eva Hesse, who missed (unlike Cragg) its unexpected humor--how much desire can laugh at itself, realizing its own absurdity, which is its saving grace.
TONY CRAGG
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