Redress is payment or action to put a wrong right. Seek redress, legal redress, redress the balance.
As a verb it means to correct an imbalance, and redress the balance is the fixed phrase. As a noun it is the formal word for a remedy, and having no redress means there is nothing you can do about it.
1nounredressPayment or action to put a wrong right.
“The customers who lost their savings are demanding redress from the bank.”
redress is a remedy.
Old French redrescer means to set upright again, from re- plus dresser, to arrange.
Old French
redrecier — to stand (someone or something) up; to stand up again
Middle French
redresser — to stand (someone or something) up; to stand up again; to rebuild, to repair something damaged, to rectify, to restore; to obtain redress; to cure; (of hair) to stand on end; to revise a judgment
Anglo-Norman
radresser
Middle English
redressen
English, today
redress
Built from
From Middle English redressen, from Anglo-Norman radresser, redrescer, redrescier and Middle French redresser (“to stand (someone or something) up; to stand up again; to rebuild, to repair something damaged, to rectify, to restore; to obtain redress; to cure; (of hair) to stand on end; to revise a judgment”) (modern French redresser), from Old French redrecier (“to stand (someone or something) up; to stand up again”), from Old French re- (“again, once more”) (from Latin re-, from Proto-Italic wre- (“again”); further etymology uncertain) + Old French drechier, drecier, dresser (“to dress; to stand up”) (from Vulgar Latin drēctiāre, a contracted form of dīrēctiāre, from Latin dīrēctus (“straight”)). Compare Catalan redreçar, Spanish redreçar obsolete, Italian redreçare, redrezare, redricciare, ridirizzare all obsolete, ridrizzare, Latin redressare (“to repair; to set right”), Old Occitan redreisar, redresar.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA