These words are comparable in meaning to free a person or thing from some dangerous or unfavourable situation or condition. Save is a general word with broad application. It can refer to the help which is offered when a person or thing has already been subjected to some kind of danger or threat of injury: diving into the lake to save a drowning child. It can designate the protective measures taken to ward off an impending disaster: inoculating a community to save it from the threat of a dull-scale epidemic. In less serious situations, save can suggest the careful treatment employed to avoid fatigue, damage, etc.: Help save your eyesight by the use of good lighting. In all these senses, save goes beyond the immediate helpful action to suggest the preservation of the person or thing which is saved for further life or use. Save also has a theological reference to a freedom from spiritual death or the consequences of sin: a firm belief that his soul would be saved only if he devoted his life to works of charity.

The sense of deliver being compared here is rather formal in tone and is almost never used in reference to things. Like save , it means to free or protect from some real or potential danger, harm, etc.: Only the most dedicated work on the part of his barrister delivered the condemned man from prison.

Ransom and redeem are alike in denoting the securing of the release of a person or thing from bondage, captivity, detention, pawn or any like condition, upon payment of a sum of money or some figurative equivalent. Ransom has special relevance to the release arranged for a kidnapped person: willing to pay any price to ransom their infant son. Redeem commonly suggests the recovering of something through payment of a sum of money: to redeem mortgaged property; to redeem a pawned typewriter. In theological contexts, redeem has specific reference to Christ’s salvation of mankind from the power and penalties of sin by his death upon the Cross.

Rescue is interchangeable with the first meaning of save in its implication of aid to someone who is in imminent danger: brave firemen rescuing people from a burning building. Less commonly, it refers to the protective measures used to save something that is being threatened by injury or destruction: steps taken to rescue the tenement from decay.