REFORMATION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Reformation mean? 

• REFORMATION (noun)
  The noun REFORMATION has 3 senses:

1. improvement (or an intended improvement) in the existing form or condition of institutions or practices etc.; intended to make a striking change for the better in social or political or religious affairs

2. a religious movement of the 16th century that began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the creation of Protestant churches

3. rescuing from error and returning to a rightful course

  Familiarity information: REFORMATION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• REFORMATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Improvement (or an intended improvement) in the existing form or condition of institutions or practices etc.; intended to make a striking change for the better in social or political or religious affairs

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("reformation" is a kind of...):

improvement; melioration (a condition superior to an earlier condition)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "reformation"):

counterreformation (a reformation intended to counter the results of a prior reformation)

Derivation:

reform (improve by alteration or correction of errors or defects and put into a better condition)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A religious movement of the 16th century that began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the creation of Protestant churches

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

Protestant Reformation; Reformation

Hypernyms ("Reformation" is a kind of...):

religious movement (a movement intended to bring about religious reforms)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Rescuing from error and returning to a rightful course

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

reclamation; reformation

Context example:

the reclamation of delinquent children

Hypernyms ("reformation" is a kind of...):

deliverance; delivery; rescue; saving (recovery or preservation from loss or danger)

Derivation:

reform (change for the better)

reform (make changes for improvement in order to remove abuse and injustices)

reform (bring, lead, or force to abandon a wrong or evil course of life, conduct, and adopt a right one)

 Context examples 

"Sir," I answered, a wanderer's repose or a sinner's reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

She wanted more vigorous measures, a more complete reformation, a quicker release from debt, a much higher tone of indifference for everything but justice and equity.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

This family of lamins has two members (Lamin-B1 and -B2), are present in all cells and play a role in the disintegration and reformation of the nuclear envelop during mitosis.

(Lamin B, NCI Thesaurus)

These, and a thousand other reformations, I firmly counted upon by your encouragement; as indeed they were plainly deducible from the precepts delivered in my book.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I do not expect that you, who always rebelled against my just authority, exerted for your benefit and reformation, should owe me any good-will now.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In a few hot and bitter words, he compared their false brother's exit to the expulsion of our first parents from the garden, and more than hinted that unless a reformation occurred some others of the community might find themselves in the same evil and perilous case.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Many were the inquiries she was eager to make of Miss Tilney; but so active were her thoughts, that when these inquiries were answered, she was hardly more assured than before, of Northanger Abbey having been a richly endowed convent at the time of the Reformation, of its having fallen into the hands of an ancestor of the Tilneys on its dissolution, of a large portion of the ancient building still making a part of the present dwelling although the rest was decayed, or of its standing low in a valley, sheltered from the north and east by rising woods of oak.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Reformation may be its cure; and I could reform—I have strength yet for that—if—but where is the use of thinking of it, hampered, burdened, cursed as I am?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

She rated Lady Russell's influence highly; and as to the severe degree of self-denial which her own conscience prompted, she believed there might be little more difficulty in persuading them to a complete, than to half a reformation.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)