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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

mitigate.

To reduce, lessen, or decrease and thereby to make less severe or easier to bear.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈmɪt.ɪ.ɡeɪt/
  1. To reduce, lessen, or decrease and thereby to make less severe or easier to bear.

    transitive
  2. To downplay.

    transitive
  3. To give force or effect toward preventing a problem.

    intransitive · proscribed
    We've mitigated against the chance of flooding.
Where this word comes from

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”).

adj
  1. Mitigated, alleviated.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.