palliate
Americanverb
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to lessen the severity of (pain, disease, etc) without curing or removing; alleviate; mitigate
-
to cause (an offence) to seem less serious by concealing evidence; extenuate
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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palliatesimple
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palliatessimple
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have palliatedperfect
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has palliatedperfect
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am palliatingprogressive
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are palliatingprogressive
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is palliatingprogressive
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have been palliatingperfect progressive
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has been palliatingperfect progressive
Past
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palliatedsimple
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had palliatedperfect
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was palliatingprogressive
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were palliatingprogressive
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had been palliatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of palliate
First recorded in 1540–50, palliate is from the Late Latin word palliātus cloaked, covered. See pallium, -ate 1
Explanation
When you palliate something, you try to make something less bad: “City leaders tried to palliate effects of the trash haulers' strike by distributing extra large garbage cans with tight-fitting lids.” Palliate is the word to use when you want to make something feel or seem better. Palliate doesn’t mean “cure” or “solve.” Instead, something that palliates relieves the symptoms or consequences of something, without addressing the underlying cause. Your dentist might give you pain-killing drugs to palliate the discomfort caused by an impacted molar, but that molar is still there, waiting to cause more trouble.
Vocabulary lists containing palliate
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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:
The easing of lockdown restrictions coincides with preparations by the cash-strapped Caribbean island nation for its tourist high season, which it hopes will bring much-needed dollars to palliate a dire economic crisis.
From Reuters ● Sep. 24, 2021
His role, he said, was “not to ‘sell’ the U.S.A. but to ‘explain’ it, not to palliate its blemishes but to contextualize them.”
From New York Times ● May 3, 2016
Results palliate everything, but without them significant fault lines are exposed.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 2, 2015
Ultimately, biomedical research offers no value to the public if our work does not result in the availability of safe and effective interventions to cure, treat, palliate, diagnose, and prevent disease.
From Science Magazine ● Sep. 4, 2013
I find great comfort in the Scriptures, because I have no secret pangs of unconfessed guilt, or any wish in my heart to cover or palliate my offences.
From The History of Margaret Catchpole A Suffolk Girl by Cobbold, Richard
Counting it no doubt palliates if not deadens any reservations.
From New York Times ● Nov. 7, 2017
But the art that palliates Humbert’s misery has not notably relieved the distress of reviewers, most of whom have felt obliged to ask themselves, “Why has the author done this horrid thing?”
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 1, 1958
Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates, whilst it palliates the countless diseases of society?
From Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer by Frederickson, Charles W.
Statistics versus children.—Such teaching palliates educational situations without affording a solution.
From The Vitalized School by Pearson, Francis B.
At thirty, youth, with all it palliates and excuses, is gone forever.
From Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 05 Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors by Hubbard, Elbert
The calls palliated some of Collins’s guilt, but not all of it.
From The New Yorker ● May 20, 2019
Brogan: So you’ve done this, you’ve obliterated the aneurysm, removed or palliated the tumor, what’s next?
From Slate ● Apr. 27, 2017
Charm and high purposes palliated the pure ether of his arrogance.
From US News ● Apr. 9, 2015
It holds that while aging is inevitable, many of the distressing changes so often seen with it can be palliated, minimized or actually averted.
From Time Magazine Archive
The inconvenience of this system in record-keeping is palliated by various devices, for instance reference to well-known events, reigns of kings, dynasties, local lords, etc.
From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin
On the one hand, if he finds significant results, it could lead to groundbreaking methods for palliating some of the world’s problems.
From Scientific American ● May 18, 2011
With no palliating wage increases, labor grows daily surlier.
From Time Magazine Archive
The eventual answer, however, lies not in palliating deprivation but in enabling the young to escape the self-regenerating cycle that has trapped their parents in poverty.
From Time Magazine Archive
Dr. Farrar allows no palliating plea for the cursing Psalms.
From The Book Of God In The Light Of The Higher Criticism by Foote, G. W. (George William)
There was no doubting it, no denying it, no palliating it even.
From The Story of a New York House by Frost, A. B. (Arthur Burdett)
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.
