Noun

(en noun)

The act of improving]]; advancement or growth; [[promote, promotion in desirable qualities; progress toward what is better; melioration; as, the improvement of the mind, of land, roads, etc.

* (Robert South)

I look upon your city as the best place of improvement .

* (Hugh Blair)

Exercise is the chief source of improvement in all our faculties.

* , chapter=19

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=Nothing was too small to receive attention, if a supervising eye could suggest improvements likely to conduce to the common welfare. Mr. Gordon Burnage, for instance, personally visited dust-bins and back premises, accompanied by a sort of village bailiff, going his round like a commanding officer doing billets.}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=70, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Engineers of a different kind , passage=Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers.

The act of making profitable use or application of anything, or the state of being profitably employed; a turning to good account; practical application, as of a doctrine, principle, or theory, stated in a discourse.

* (Samuel Clarke)

A good improvement of his reason.

* (John Tillotson)

I shall make some improvement of this doctrine.

The state of being improved; betterment; advance; also, that which is improved; as, the new edition is an improvement on the old.

* (Joseph Addison)

The parts of Sinon, Camilla, and some few others, are improvements on the Greek poet.

Increase; growth; progress; advance.

* (Joseph Addison)

There is a design of publishing the history of architecture, with its several improvements and decays.

* (Robert South)

Those vices which more particularly receive improvement by prosperity.

(plural): Valuable additions or betterments, as buildings, clearings, drains, fences, etc., on premises.

(Patent Laws): A useful addition to, or modification of, a machine, manufacture, or composition.

Noun

(en noun)

The act of transforming or the state of being transformed.

A marked change in appearance or character, especially one for the better.

(mathematics) The replacement of the variables in an algebraic expression by their values in terms of another set of variables; a mapping of one space onto another or onto itself; a function that changes the position or direction of the axes of a coordinate system.

(linguistics) A rule that systematically converts one syntactic form into another; a sentence derived by such a rule.

(genetics) The alteration of a bacterial cell caused by the transfer of DNA from another, especially if pathogenic.

(politics, South Africa) Ideologically driven government policy - becoming more conformant with socialist and African nationalist groupthink.