saving grace, a

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.

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.

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.

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.

A single redeeming quality, usually cited as compensating for other, negative characteristics. The term, which alludes to the theological concept of salvation from eternal damnation, was used literally from the late sixteenth century on. It began to be transferred to matters of somewhat lighter import in the late nineteenth century. J. B. Priestley so used it (Self-Selected Essays, 1932): “Here, in its plain lack of ideas, is the saving grace of this dull company.”