improving

That tends to improve someone or something (especially (dated) to educate or morally better a person).

Adjective

  1. That tends to improve someone or something (especially (dated) to educate or morally better a person).
    • 1663, Robert Boyle, Some Considerations Touching the Usefulnesse of Experimental Naturall Philosophy, Oxford: Ric[hard] Davis, Essay 1, p. 2, […] that Diviner part of Man, the Soule, which alone is capable of wearing...
    • […] nothing is so improving to the Temper as the Study of the Beauties, either of Poetry, Eloquence, Musick, or Painting. - 1741, David Hume, “On the Delicacy of Taste and Passion”, in Essays, Moral and Political,...
    • She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat took...

Forms

more improving most improving

Synonyms

edifying uplifting

Derived

improvingly unimproving

Verb

  1. present participle and gerund of improve