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Betterment   Listen
noun
Betterment  n.  
1.
A making better; amendment; improvement.
2.
(Law) An improvement of an estate which renders it better than mere repairing would do; generally used in the plural. (U. S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Betterment" Quotes from Famous Books



... hands upon the success of Mr. Holway's philanthropic scheme for the betterment of South Orham's male citizens. Jeered at at fust by the unregenerate, it had gone on, winnin' its way into the hearts of the people, until one by one the said unregenerate had regenerated, and now the club numbered thirty souls and ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... known that I should die before the year was out. It is true that I die in sorrow and with a miserable sense of failure, for you have been my best-beloved, my idol, and I leave you terribly placed in life and with little hope of betterment. But for you I have no reproach. You have given me love for love, and duty for duty. Life has treated you brutally; what has come now was, I suppose, inevitable. Human nature when it is strong enough is stronger than moral law. I grieve for you, but I die without grievance ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... find out how to make our psychic powers count for the betterment of the world. I am very psychic. ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... colonists of Hispaniola, the chorus of rebuke had swelled until it made itself heard, sparing none amongst the offenders against equity and humanity. The development of the collective moral sense of a people is only slowly progressive, and the betterment of racial conditions is more safely accomplished by evolution than revolution, hence if the moral vision of Las Casas did not detect the injustice practised on the negroes, simultaneously with his keen perception of that which was being perpetrated ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... for legislation regardless of constitutional quibble, for a shorter work-day, a higher wage, the establishment of residential clubs, the closer cooeperation between existing organizations for industrial betterment."—Boston Advertiser. ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... were discovered and the plantations started, the Government attitude was set. Biocrystal culture is just sordid money grubbing. The real business of the Colony is to promote the betterment of the natives, as defined in University of Adelaide terms. That's to say, convert them into ersatz Terrans. You know why General Maith ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper

... mothers! It is not enough to live, not enough to reproduce one's kind: we have to change, progress, improve—and instinct is no help here. Instinct is nothing but inherited habit. It always dates a long way behind us. It is never any guide in new conditions or a incentive to betterment. Instinct holds us in chains to the past; or ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... Nevertheless, upon the gamete depend those inherent faculties which enable the zygote to profit by his opportunities, and, unless the zygote has received them from the gamete, the advantages of education are of little worth. If we are bent upon producing a permanent betterment that shall be independent of external circumstances, if we wish the national stock to become inherently more vigorous in mind and body, more free from congenital physical defect and feeble mentality, better able to assimilate and act upon the stores of knowledge which ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett

... growing on me about everybody) that Morrison, like most of us, has been miscast. He doesn't really care a continental about the aesthetic salvation of the country. It's only the contagion of the American craze for connecting everything with social betterment, tagging everything with that label, that ever made him think he did. He's far too thoroughgoing an aesthete himself. What he was brought into the world for, was to appreciate, as nobody else can, all sorts of esoterically fine things. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... she saw little by little as Juliet went from room to room—seizing in each upon its possibilities, ignoring its poorer features except to suggest their betterment, giving her whole-hearted, friendly counsel in a way which continually took the prospective homemakers into consideration—that she herself was losing something immeasurably valuable in not attempting to cultivate these same ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... window before going to bed, but closed it as soon as he was asleep. Lawrence Veiller, our greatest expert on tenement conditions, says: "To bathe in a tenement where a family of six occupy three rooms often involves the sacrifice of privacy and decency, which are quite as important to social betterment as cleanliness." ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... break away from his sinful snares and vicious companions, and, amid new scenes, find help in self-reform. He was not, therefore, without at least occasional aspirations after moral improvement; but again he made the common and fatal mistake of overlooking the Source of all true betterment. "God was not in all his thoughts." He found that to leave one place for another was not to leave his sin behind, for he took ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... three times three, For if there was a pioneer in Civilisation's host, It was the cheery-hearted chap who schemed the Penny Post. And when the croaking cravens, who are down on all Reform, And shout their ancient shibboleth, and raise their tea-pot storm, Whene'er there's talk of Betterment in any branch of State, And vent their venom on the Wise, their greed upon the Great, Punch says to his true countrymen, "Peace, peace, good friends—be still! Reform does not spell ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various

... general terms all efforts at social betterment—the reduction of unemployment, the improvement of wages and relief, the reduction of taxation, direct and indirect, and the provision of better housing conditions—should undoubtedly help to make conditions more secure ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan

... etc. The New York Courts, under the present statute, are powerless to prevent this abuse. In Massachusetts half a dozen of our principal editors and "special writers" would have been locked up long ago to the betterment of the community and to the increase of respect for ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... were urged to greater speed, and they responded gamely. They seemed to realize the necessity for haste, and took advantage of the momentary betterment in the surface over ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton

... of man, the pig holds an important place. He has had no small share in the betterment of the estate of his masters. One of the large questions which beset men in their unconscious endeavors to lay the foundations of civilization was that of food-supply. No sooner does a population become ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... Rhode Island delegation in both Houses of Congress voted in favor, the only eastern State except Maine to have this record. In October Miss Anthony called a meeting of the presidents of all the women's organizations of the State in the interests of social betterment, which resulted in the foundation of the Civics Cooperative Council, and Mrs. Nancy M. Schoonmaker was engaged to give a course of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... added to the public domain for the use of those who desired to secure free homes under our beneficent laws. It is difficult to estimate the increase of wealth which will result from the conversion of these waste lands into farms, but it is more difficult to estimate the betterment which will result to the families that have found renewed hope and courage in the ownership of a home and the assurance of a comfortable subsistence under free and healthful conditions. It is also gratifying to be able to feel, as we may, that this work has proceeded upon ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... to resist—and raised, and tended, and saved." Often did such thoughts as these pass through his mind while watching by her bed; alternated, checked, and sometimes destroyed, by the fears which attended her precarious condition, but returning with every apparent betterment or hopeful symptom. ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... in force up to 1866. Similar historical relations and similar national exigences of the time bind us to Italy. Both Germany and Italy desire to prolong the blessings of peace that they may pursue in tranquillity the consolidation of their newly acquired unity, the betterment of their national institutions, and the increase of ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... "relief," it is a method of humanity, and its aim is not merely to increase the mechanical force of the State, but to raise the average of character, of morale, in its citizens. Nor do these speeches represent only a batch of platform promises. The great scheme of social betterment preached in these pages is already embodied in half a dozen Acts of Parliament, with corresponding organisations in the Board of Trade and elsewhere; and if the Budget passes, the crown can be put upon them next year ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... punctuation] an engineering standpoint, or the standpoint of the mechanic or artisan, there is absolutely no suggestion of betterment to be made, for the feather is an exact, perfectly finished product. Its long central quill tapers from base to point with geometric precision, thereby giving perfect resistance to bending force, and this is one of the combination ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... give work only to co-religionists. In a short time it had won a very considerable success, though perhaps not the actual majority of the population. Many of the poor, hitherto Anabaptists, thronged to it in hopes of social betterment. Many adventurers with no motive but to stir the waters in which they might fish joined the new party. But on the whole, as its appeal was primarily moral and religious, its constituency was the more substantial, progressive, and intelligent ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... church function as an agency for rural progress. The energies of such devotees are so exhausted in their services that they lack the energy, even if they had the inspiration, to link their efforts to any program of community betterment. This group is usually found not only opposing progressive measures in the church but also opposing other progressive activities in the community, such as better schools, ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt



Words linked to "Betterment" :   revival, preservation, refinement, better, amelioration, elaboration, revitalisation, improvement, resurgence, recovery, shift, conservation, adjustment, fitting, melioration



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