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mitigate

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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WOTD – 16 November 2006

Etymology 1

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From Middle English mitigaten (“to relieve pain, soothe; (swelling) to abate; (hemorrhoids) to relieve; (the mind) to placate, appease; to end, check; to stop, cease”), from mitigat(e) (“mitigated, alleviated, relived”, also used as the past participle of mitigaten) +‎ -en (verb-forming suffix), borrowed from Latin mītigātus, the perfect passive participle of mītigō (“to make soft, ripe; to tame, pacify”), from mītis (“gentle, mild, ripe”) + -igō (“to do, make”), from Proto-Indo-European *meh₁i- (“mild, soft”).[1]

Pronunciation

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Verb

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mitigate (third-person singular simple present mitigates, present participle mitigating, simple past and past participle mitigated)

  1. (transitive, of problems or flaws) To reduce, lessen, or decrease and thereby to make less severe or easier to bear.
    • 1795, George Washington, Seventh State of the Union Address:
      Measures are pursuing to prevent or mitigate the usual consequences of such outrages, and with the hope of their succeeding at least to avert general hostility.
    • 1813, James Madison, Fifth State of the Union Address:
      But in yielding to it the retaliation has been mitigated as much as possible, both in its extent and in its character...
    • 1896, Walter Hadwen, The Case Against Vaccination:
      Then they tell us that vaccination will mitigate the disease that it will make it milder.
    • 1900 December – 1901 August, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 7, in The First Men in the Moon, London: George Newnes, […], published 1901, →OCLC:
      Then I discovered the brilliance of the landscape around was mitigated by blue spectacles.
    • 1920, H. P. Lovecraft, The Cats of Ulthar:
      The plague had not been kind to him, yet had left him this small furry thing to mitigate his sorrow; and when one is very young, one can find great relief in the lively antics of a black kitten.
    • 2018 December 1, Drachinifel, 8:56 from the start, in Anti-Slavery Patrols - The West Africa Squadron‎[1], archived from the original on 29 November 2024:
      This highly-aggressive approach had results, but briefly caused a major uproar in parts of the United States, which was mitigated by the Webster–Ashburton Treaty in 1842, which formalised the U.S. Navy's contribution to the antislavery efforts.
    • 2021 October 6, Greg Morse, “A need for speed and the drive for 125”, in RAIL, number 941, page 53:
      But then crashworthiness is not about preventing accidents, but about mitigating their consequences.
  2. (transitive) To downplay.
  3. (intransitive, proscribed) To give force or effect toward preventing a problem.
    Synonym: militate
    We've mitigated against the chance of flooding.
Synonyms
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Antonyms
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Coordinate terms
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Derived terms
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Translations
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Etymology 2

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From Middle English mitigat(e) (“mitigated”, also used as the past participle of mitigaten and of mitigate in Early Modern English), see -ate (adjective-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.

Adjective

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mitigate (comparative more mitigate, superlative most mitigate)

  1. (obsolete) mitigated, alleviated

References

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  1. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “mitigate”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

Italian

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Etymology 1

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Verb

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mitigate

  1. inflection of mitigare:
    1. second-person plural present indicative
    2. second-person plural imperative

Etymology 2

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Participle

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mitigate f pl

  1. feminine plural of mitigato

Latin

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Participle

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mītigāte

  1. vocative masculine singular of mītigātus

Spanish

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Verb

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mitigate

  1. second-person singular voseo imperative of mitigar combined with te
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