militate
Americanverb (used without object)
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to have a substantial effect; weigh heavily.
His prison record militated against him.
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Obsolete.
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to be a soldier.
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to fight for a belief.
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verb
Commonly Confused
See mitigate.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of militate
First recorded in 1615–25; from Latin mīlitātus (past participle of mīlitāre “to serve as a soldier”), equivalent to mīlit- (stem of mīles ) “soldier” + -ātus verb suffix; see -ate 1
Explanation
Your father's loss of his job may militate against the big family vacation your parents had been planning. To militate is to be a deciding factor for or against. The word militate descends from the same Latin word as military. Imagine armed soldiers at a check point. Their presence might militate against your plan of crossing the border, or it might militate for their bringing you in for questioning. When you are young, sometimes your age works for you, and sometimes it militates against you.
Vocabulary lists containing militate
Fighting Words: Belli and Milit
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond Vietnam" (1967)
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bel and milit
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
What if U.S. domestic concerns militate in favor of amending the legal structures of those countries?
From Barron's ● Nov. 19, 2025
"And it's ridiculous that he wants to call E. Jean a liar when the facts militate toward the truth, which is what she said happened."
From Salon ● Jan. 17, 2023
Meyer noted that if he were a chief security officer of a company with ties to Ukraine, “I would militate rather strongly to unwind my exposure.”
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 23, 2022
Ben Sulaymen has consulted with all the team bosses to seek their views on what went wrong in Abu Dhabi and what changes could be made to militate against a repeat.
From BBC ● Jan. 27, 2022
So through a complicated, haphazard, and constantly readjusted web of economic, social, and moral incentives, modern society does its best to militate against crime.
From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt
Before Callais, courts used a disparate-impact analysis that militated toward concentrating minority voters so that they could elect representatives based on their share of the population.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 17, 2026
It could have said that Purcell considerations militated against immediate change.
From Slate ● May 13, 2026
Though they recognized the antebellum nation as configured in such a way that militated against their social advancement, Hosea Easton, for example, claimed that Black people were “constitutionally Americans.”
From Salon ● Nov. 10, 2024
In the first years of podcasts, a decade or so ago, technological limitations militated against their widespread adoption: they had to be laboriously transferred from a computer to an MP3 player or an iPod.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 12, 2018
But several things militated against my starting to work.
From "Native Son" by Richard Wright
They sprang into action, “being vocal, agitating, militating, marching, doing all that great stuff,” Antoinette Coakley, one of the students, recalled recently.
From New York Times ● Mar. 20, 2022
Lord Justice Popplewell stated "the factors militating against a prosecution in this case outweigh the factors in favour of a prosecution".
From BBC ● Jan. 24, 2022
Roth: I think that goes to my point about 3D militating against precision.
From Slate ● Feb. 23, 2021
But there were forces militating against taking the plunge, even beyond his inhibitions.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 10, 2018
Besides the French occupation, two things were recognized as militating against the opera's success:—the music was not to the taste of the people, and the work was too long.
From A Book of Operas Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music by Krehbiel, Henry Edward
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
