Redeemable

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Capable of being exchanged for money, goods, or a service ; able to be restored from a loss, fault, or negative condition
2. That which can be turned in for monetary worth or benefit ; having the potential to be improved or saved from a bad situation
3. Susceptible to conversion into cash or value ; capable of recovery or correction from an undesirable state

Etymology: Redeemable is built from "redeem" and the suffix "-able," which means "capable of being." The chain behind "redeem" runs back to Latin "redimere," a compound of "re-" (back) and "emere" (to buy, take), so the core idea was buying something back. Latin "redimere" passed into Old French as "redimer," and English borrowed it as "redemen" in Middle English. The suffix has its own long path: it descends from Latin "-abilis," which passed through Old French "-able" before reaching English in the same Middle English period. The sense of "redeemable" as something that can be exchanged for cash grows directly from that buying-back idea. A redeemable bond or voucher is one that its holder can turn back into money or goods, so the cash meaning is the original sense of purchase applied to financial instruments. The moral and spiritual sense, something capable of recovery from a bad state, follows the same pattern: to redeem something is to buy it out of a condition of loss or debt.

Synonyms: recoverable, reclaimable, restorable, refundable, salvageable

Antonyms: irrecoverable, unredeemable, lost, damaged, forsaken