reformability

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re·form

(rĭ-fôrm′)

v. re·formed, re·form·ing, re·forms

v.tr.

1. To improve by alteration, correction of error, or removal of defects; put into a better form or condition: reform the tax code.

a. To abolish abuse or malpractice in: reform the government.

b. To put an end to (an abuse or wrong).

3. To induce or persuade (a person) to give up harmful or immoral practices; cause to adopt a better way of life.

4. Chemistry To subject (hydrocarbons) to cracking.

v.intr.

To change for the better.

1. Action to improve or correct what is wrong or defective in something: health care reform.

2. An instance of this; an improvement: reforms in education.

adj.

1. Relating to or favoring reform: a reform candidate for mayor.

2. Reform Of or relating to Reform Judaism.

[Middle English reformen, from Old French reformer, from Latin refōrmāre : re-, re- + fōrmāre, to shape (from fōrma, form).]

re·form′a·bil′i·ty n.

re·form′a·ble adj.

re·form′er n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

reformability

(rɪˌfɔːməˈbɪlɪtɪ)

the extent to which something or someone is reformable; the capability or susceptibility to reform

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

References in periodicals archive ?

The disobliging and incorrigible Captain Jack, on the other hand, becomes the literary conduit for readers' anxieties about the criminal Black-Guard and their skepticism about their reformability. But whether the redeemable young thief or the damned one, an object of sympathy or a source of anxiety, Defoe's criminal children convey Colonel Jack's direct engagement with the complex and often contradictory discourses of child criminality in the period.

Criminal children in the eighteenth century and Daniel Defoe's Colonel Jack

(3) On the "reformability" of the Soviet Union, see Stephen F.

Nationalism, triumphalism, and the final months of the Soviet Union

Up until a few months ago, the history of the IWC's failure, together with that of the broader New Left, to gain lasting traction within the Labour Party under far more favourable conditions than those obtaining today, raised searching and somewhat prohibitive questions about the future reformability of Labour and whether the energy needed to create a genuine alternative to the current economic order should once again be absorbed in an attempt to remake British social democracy (Panitch and Leys, 2001, 15).

Bring back the Institute for Workers' Control: The movement for workers' control in the 1970s was among the most promising of the many roads not taken in the forgotten history of the left

This article describes the ways that behavioral interventions used in juvenile justice systems are shaped by racist assumptions about reformability. It examines contemporary behavioral change interventions that conceptualize their ideal recipient as submissive, deferential, and responsible.

Responsible submission: the racialized consequences of neoliberal juvenile justice practices