mitigate
English
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]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
[edit]Verb
[edit]mitigate (third-person singular simple present mitigates, present participle mitigating, simple past and past participle mitigated)
- (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.
- (transitive) To downplay.
- (intransitive, proscribed) To give force or effect toward preventing a problem.
- Synonym: militate
- We've mitigated against the chance of flooding.
Synonyms
[edit]Antonyms
[edit]- (antonym(s) of “to reduce or lessen”): aggrandize, aggravate, exacerbate, incite, increase, intensify, irritate, worsen
Coordinate terms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]
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Etymology 2
[edit]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
[edit]mitigate (comparative more mitigate, superlative most mitigate)
References
[edit]- ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “mitigate”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
Italian
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]Verb
[edit]mitigate
- inflection of mitigare:
Etymology 2
[edit]Participle
[edit]mitigate f pl
Latin
[edit]Participle
[edit]mītigāte
Spanish
[edit]Verb
[edit]mitigate
- second-person singular voseo imperative of mitigar combined with te
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *meh₁i
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₂eǵ-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Latin
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- English terms with quotations
- English intransitive verbs
- English proscribed terms
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms suffixed with -ate (adjective)
- English adjectives
- English terms with obsolete senses
- Italian non-lemma forms
- Italian verb forms
- Italian past participle forms
- Latin non-lemma forms
- Latin participle forms
- Spanish non-lemma forms
- Spanish verb forms