Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or an instance of ameliorating.
  • noun The state of being ameliorated; improvement.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of ameliorating, or the state of being ameliorated; a making or becoming better; improvement; melioration.
  • noun A thing wherein improvement is realized; an improvement.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of ameliorating, or the state of being ameliorated; making or becoming better; improvement; melioration.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of making better.
  • noun an improvement

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the act of relieving ills and changing for the better

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French amélioration

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Examples

Comments

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  • antonym: "pejoration"

    December 21, 2006

  • A semantic change toward a more positive connotation in the meaning of a word or morpheme; for example, the English word nice, which meant "foolish" in Middle English, now means kind or pleasant.

    June 20, 2007

  • Disraeli, Coningsby, with a couple of political fixers selecting an electoral slogan:

    'And now for our cry,' said Mr. Taper. ... 'Ancient institutions and modern improvements, I suppose, Mr. Tadpole?'

    'Ameliorations is the better word, ameliorations. Nobody knows exactly what it means.'

    September 27, 2008