Make Your Point > Archived Issues > MITIGATE
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pronounce
MITIGATE:
Say it "MID uh gate."
To hear it, click here.
connect this word to others:
Waaaay back when, in 2015, we checked out the word unmitigated, meaning "just as bad, hostile, or troublesome as something can possibly be."
Today, let's peek into the heart of unmitigated and spend some time with the verb there, mitigate.
To mitigate things is to soften them, to make them more gentle, to al____ate them: to ease them, making them lighter or less intense.
As in, "In a surprisingly sweet scene in an otherwise disgusting movie, Billy Madison pretends to have also wet his pants, mitigating Ernie's shame and embarrassment."
(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)
definition:
We took the word "mitigate" from Latin, where its roots literally mean "to make soft or gentle."
To mitigate something is to make it less bad, less harmful, or less severe.
grammatical bits:
Part of speech:
Verb, the transitive kind: "This medicine mitigates their suffering;" "We need to mitigate the risks."
Other forms:
Mitigated, mitigating;
mitigation;
mitigable;
unmitigated, unmitigating.
how to use it:
"Mitigate" is a formal, common word.
It usually has a positive tone: mitigating things makes them better.
Most often, we talk about mitigating something bad, like pain, stress, risks, threats, losses, biases, disasters, inequality, climate change, disease, or the spread of disease.
We can also talk about mitigating people's worries or concerns. "All those helmets and elbow pads mitigated our worries as the children scaled the rock wall."
And, we talk about mitigating the bad effects of one thing on another, or mitigating the harmful influence of one thing on another.
Every now and again, we'll talk about something that mitigates the harshness of a punishment. "Feeling sympathetic, the judge mitigated the fine." "The ten-year sentence was mitigated to two."
Finally, it's much less common, but we can also talk about factors or circumstances that mitigate a crime, an offense, or some other type of wrongdoing--or the severity or seriousness of it. "When considering the Heinz dilemma, we ask ourselves, does his wife's illness mitigate Heinz's theft of the medicine?"
examples:
"Odessa High also had a greater percentage of students than Permian pass the state-mandated test in math and English... That too was a wonderful accomplishment. But it did not mitigate the feelings of failure on the football field."
— H. G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights, 1990
"Love [is] often cited as the key mitigating factor against the inevitability of existential gloom."
— The Onion, 3 July 2013
has this page helped you understand "mitigate"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "mitigate" without saying "tone down" or "relieve."
try it out:
Talk about something you can always count on to mitigate your stress--or your boredom.
How does it help? Does it sometimes completely erase your stress or boredom, or just mitigate it?
before you review, play:
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
Our game this month is Perfectly Cromulent Words!
In each issue this month, match a scene from The Simpsons to the term that it calls to mind.
To see the answer, scroll to the bottom of the issue.
Try this one today:
Does the scene below suggest the word fortify, mortify, or vilify?
review this word:
A. as awful as it can be.
B. as bright as it can be.
C. as sneaky as it can be.
2. In an LA Times story about the paraplegic athlete Angela Madsen, David Wharton wrote: "This quest of hers, to row from California to Hawaii alone, brought both frustration and _____, setbacks mitigated by small _____."
A. joy .. victories
B. pain .. injuries
C. success .. discomforts
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
Waaaay back when, in 2015, we checked out the word unmitigated, meaning "just as bad, hostile, or troublesome as something can possibly be."
We took the word "mitigate" from Latin, where its roots literally mean "to make soft or gentle."
Part of speech:
"Mitigate" is a formal, common word.
"Odessa High also had a greater percentage of students than Permian pass the state-mandated test in math and English... That too was a wonderful accomplishment. But it did not mitigate the feelings of failure on the football field."
Explain the meaning of "mitigate" without saying "tone down" or "relieve."
Talk about something you can always count on to mitigate your stress--or your boredom.
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
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