corrective

corrective adj remedial, restorative, sanative, *curative

Analogous words: helping, aiding, assisting (see HELP vb): salutary, hygienic, *healthful

corrective n Corrective, control, check, antidote are comparable in their extended senses where they denote some-thing which serves to keep another thing in its desired place or condition.

Corrective is applied to an agency or influence which keeps true a thing that is subject to aberration or deviation, or which rectifies or remedies a departure in it from truth, balance, soundness, or health

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the sight of the product [of our work] put to its full uses. . . is the best corrective to our blunders— Suzzallo

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a salutary corrective to the sometimes facile optimism and mass- hypnotized rhetoric of the revolutionary poets— Day Lewis

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Control is applied to a predetermined device, rule, agency, or procedure which sets a guard upon a person or thing so as to prevent his or its overpassing prescribed limits or so as to enable him or it to be discovered if in error

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the Constitution of the United States sets up various controls for the three branches of government, such as the veto power of the president

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a scientific investigator sets up a control for an experiment when he provides a means (usually a similar experiment identical in all but one factor) for testing the accuracy of his findings

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the only government controls authorized by law are marketing quotas— New Republic

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Check is applied to something which affords a means of securing or insuring accuracy, uniformity in quality, or the maintenance of a standard

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duplicate records are kept by different clerks as a check upon each other

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by means of statewide examinations of pupils, the regents keep a check on the efficiency of the schools

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any arbitrary formula too rigidly adhered to may endanger good writing, but a good set of principles used as a check and an aid may be very helpful— Mott

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Antidote, basically a remedy that counteracts a poison, implies that harm has been done and that a corrective which will neutralize or nullify these effects is necessary

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there is no antidote against the opium of time— Browne

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the whole truth is the best antidote to falsehoods which are dangerous chiefly because they are half-truths— Coleridge

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