mitigate
/ˈmɪt.ɪ.ɡeɪt/
mitigate verb: to reduce, lessen, or decrease and thereby to make less severe or easier to bear.
Verb
mitigate (third-person singular simple present mitigates, present participle mitigating, simple past and past participle mitigated)
- To reduce, lessen, or decrease and thereby to make less severe or easier to bear.
- 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.1795, George Washington, Seventh 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...1813, James Madison, Fifth State of the Union Address
- To downplay.
- To give force or effect toward preventing a problem.
- We've mitigated against the chance of flooding.
- Synonyms:
- militate
Adjective
mitigate (comparative more mitigate, superlative most mitigate)
mitigate meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
mitigate in Tamil
- குறை, தணி, மட்டுப்படுத்து, ஆற்று
mitigate in Urdu
- نرم ہونا, تخفیف ہونا, گھٹانا, راضی کرنا
mitigate in Bengali
- কোনো কিছুর তীব্রতা
mitigate in Malayalam
- ശമിപ്പിക്കുക, കാഠിന്യം കുറയ്ക്കുക, മന്ദമാക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
- mitigate in Kannada
- ತಣಿಸು, ತಗ್ಗಿಸು, ಇಳಿಸು, ಶಾಂತಗೊಳಿಸು
- mitigate in Odia
- ପ୍ରଶମିତ କରିବା
- mitigate in Vietnamese
- giảm nhẹ, giảm thiểu
Examples of mitigate in a sentence
- Then they tell us that vaccination will mitigate the disease that it will make it milder.1896, Walter Hadwen, The Case Against Vaccination:
- Then I discovered the brilliance of the landscape around was mitigated by blue spectacles.1900 December – 1901 August, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 7, in The First Men in the Moon, London: George Newnes, […], published 1901...
- 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.1920, H. P. Lovecraft, The Cats of Ulthar:
- 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.2018 December 1, Drachinifel, 8:56 from the start, in Anti-Slavery Patrols - The West Africa Squadron, archived from the original on 29 Nov...
Synonyms of mitigate
Antonyms
Forms of mitigate
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | mitigates |
| present participle | mitigating |
| past participle | mitigated |
| past | mitigated |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more mitigate |
| superlative | most mitigate |
Origin of mitigate
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”).
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.
Words formed from mitigate
Questions about mitigate
- What does mitigate mean?
- Mitigate means to reduce, lessen, or decrease and thereby to make less severe or easier to bear.
- What is mitigate in Tamil?
- Mitigate in Tamil is குறை, தணி, மட்டுப்படுத்து. See Mitigate meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use mitigate in a sentence?
- Then they tell us that vaccination will mitigate the disease that it will make it milder.
- What part of speech is mitigate?
- Mitigate can be a verb or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce mitigate?
- Mitigate is pronounced /ˈmɪt.ɪ.ɡeɪt/.
- What is the past tense of mitigate?
- The past tense of mitigate is mitigated.
Words near mitigate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mitigate (page history and authors); mitigate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mitigate (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mitigate (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mitigate (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mitigate (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mitigate (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-mitigate.ogg, en-au-mitigate.ogg.
Cite this entry: “mitigate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mitigate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.