mitigate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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”), of uncertain origin, but perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *meh₁y- (“mild, soft”).[1]

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.
    • 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.

to reduce, lessen, or decrease

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.

mitigate (comparative more mitigate, superlative most mitigate)

  1. (obsolete) Mitigated, alleviated.

  2. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “mitigate”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

mitigate

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

mitigate f pl

  1. feminine plural of mitigato

mītigāte

  1. vocative masculine singular of mītigātus

mitigate

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