Redress

Redress carried over quite easily from the Old French redrescier, through the Anglo-Norman redresser and the Middle English redressen, arriving in its current form around the 14th century. It has maintained the same meaning the whole time: re- ("again") dress ("straighten, arrange").

The modern English word dress is derived from the same Old French word drescier. It has its ultimate roots in the Latin combination dis- regere ("to lead straight"), and it shares this origin with the English words direct and right. So, dress has actually always been about making things correct. It is only relatively recently that common usage put the emphasis on what we wear. That is why redress is only rarely used to mean putting on fresh clothes.

Redressive: This is the adjective form of the verb redress, and it describes someone or something that tends to make the action of redressing.

Example: Martin Luther King Jr.'s socio-political stance was highly redressive for minority rights.

Redressable, Redressible: These two adjectives are interchangeable; however, redressable is the more common spelling. They both describe something as having the capacity to be redressed.

Example: The dictator's actions were so grievous that they may not be redressable.

Redressal, Redressment: These two words refer to the act of making something right. Although they are synonymous with the primary noun form of redress, they utilize nounal suffixes to take more obviously noun forms.

Example: The governor was applauded for his redressal of the issue.

Example: The people don't always understand that redressment will take time.

Repair is very similar to redress. Both words begin with the prefix re-, meaning "again," but rarely utilize it in their definitions. They both refer to setting things in order, too; but the real difference is that repair usually implies fixing a physical issue, while redress implies fixing an emotional or social problem.

Address is another word which overlaps with redress. It's not surprising considering they have similar origins and usages. Like redress, address begins with a Latin prefix; but, instead of meaning "back" or "again" like re-, ad- means "to." So address implies arranging something according to something else, and it usually carries the connotation of speaking. In other words, to address an issue would be to explain it to someone (and perhaps finding a solution in the process), but to redress the issue would be to fix it.

From Seamus Heaney's The Redress of Poetry:

Indeed her whole book is informed by the idea of counterweighting, of balancing out the forces, of redress—tilting the scales of reality towards some transcendent equilibrium.

In this passage redress refers to the act of making something right (with the original connotation of correcting it). In Heaney's title, however, redress works in a few different ways: it simultaneously means that poetry is making something right, that poetry itself is being made right, and that poetry is being redecorated like a film set.

From Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge:

But we must redress our own grievances, we must meet again, we must put our trust in Providence, and it will bless our endeavors.

Here redress implies addressing something that seems unfair.

From Lucien Gregoire's Murder in the Vatican:

If he had been in his bedclothes, he would have had to have been redressed in his daytime clothes.

Gregoire uses redressed to describe a hypothetical wardrobe change for the recently deceased.