remediate
Americanverb
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to remove or reduce (pollutants, harmful chemicals, etc.).
Water damage restoration experts mop up and dry out homes, remediate mold, decontaminate items, and repair damaged structures.
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to clean (air, soil, water, etc.) by removing or reducing pollutants, harmful chemicals, etc..
It could cost up to $10 billion to remediate the remaining 6.2 million acres of land and waters damaged by the abandoned mines.
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to lessen the effect of; ameliorate.
The university's agreement to remediate harm shall be considered an act of compassion and empathy, not an admission of guilt.
Etymology
Origin of remediate
Back formation from remediation ( def. )
Explanation
To remediate is to correct or make right. If you accidentally ran over your neighbor's bike with your car, you could remediate the bad situation by paying for the bike's repair. When you remediate some kind of damage or mistake, you repair it or set it straight. To remediate often means to make up for a lack of something, like when schools remediate students who have struggled in certain classes by giving them extra instruction after school. The origin of remediate goes back to the Latin word remedium, a cure, remedy, or medicine.
Vocabulary lists containing remediate
100 SAT words Beginning with "R"
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The Big Thirst
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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 company doesn’t have a plan to remediate indirect water consumption.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
"We are looking at environmental disasters like oil spills, and identifying ways to remediate them in faster, greener and more sustainable ways," Oran said.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 5, 2026
Many whose homes survived the fire but were contaminated by smoke and ash are still fighting with their insurance companies to remediate their homes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 7, 2026
But this summer, the building was still deemed unsafe by the fire service, which said it had to close "in the absence of any suitable plans to remediate the fire safety shortfalls".
From BBC ● Nov. 27, 2025
Cordelia's agonised invocation and summons to the unpublished forces of nature, to be aidant and remediate to the good man's distress, is continually echoed by the poet, but with a broader application.
From The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded by Bacon, Delia
The plan also pledges that by 2029, all buildings 36ft or above with unsafe cladding will either have been remediated, have a date for completion, or the landlords will be liable for severe penalties.
From BBC ● Jul. 9, 2026
The complex’s superintendent, Oscar Chang, told the local publication that the building was being remediated while waiting for a permit for work on its roof.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2026
The Los Angeles Times collected soil samples in March 2025 and published the first evidence that already remediated home sites retained elevated levels of toxic substances.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 21, 2026
He bought his parents a $4 million home in Altadena, which had to be remediated for smoke damage after the fires.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2025
The student with severe prior knowledge deficits can usually be rapidly remediated by learning basic thinking skills first: for instance, the basic memorization techniques, note taking, outlining, and free association recall techniques.
From Sequential Problem Solving A Student Handbook with Checklists for Successful Critical Thinking by Lozo, Fredric
“Preventing future Mythos level attacks and remediating identified vulnerabilities requires the participation of the broader security industry, domain expertise, and deterministic detection, which Anthropic can’t deliver,” the analysts say.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 8, 2026
US officials added that any future aid would be "dependent on the Somali Federal Government taking accountability" and remediating the matter.
From Barron's ● Jan. 8, 2026
This 2023 estimate from CalGEM is about three times higher than other parts of the state due to the complexity of sealing wells and remediating the surface in densely populated urban areas.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2025
However, this plan was dropped earlier this month over cost concerns, with the council already having spent over £300m purchasing and remediating the site there.
From BBC ● Nov. 27, 2024
The tools look for more signals of malicious activity and automate many of the time-consuming tasks of investigating and remediating breaches.
From Seattle Times ● May 1, 2023
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.
