Definition of "saving grace" []

• A redeeming quality, especially one that compensates for one's shortcomings: The scintillating conversation was the saving grace of a bad and overpriced meal. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "His saving grace among the society-minded partners was membership in an Episcopalian church."
• "But saving grace possesseth the whole soul; men are thereby sanctified throughout, in the whole "spirit and soul and body," 1 Thess.v. 23, as hath been at large declared."
• "Union unto Christ without saving grace, and saving grace without the Holy Spirit, are strangers unto the gospel and Christian religion; so is it to have a church that is holy and catholic which is not united unto Christ as a mystical head."