PALLIATE

relieve, alleviate, palliate, assuage

(verb) provide physical relief, as from pain; “This pill will relieve your headaches”

extenuate, palliate, mitigate

(verb) lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of; “The circumstances extenuate the crime”

Source: WordNet® 3.1


Etymology

Adjective

palliate (comparative more palliate, superlative most palliate)

(obsolete) Cloaked; hidden, concealed. [15th-17th c.]

(obsolete) Eased; mitigated; alleviated.

Verb

palliate (third-person singular simple present palliates, present participle palliating, simple past and past participle palliated)

To relieve the symptoms of; to ameliorate. [from 15th c.]

(obsolete) To hide or disguise. [16th-19th c.]

To cover or disguise the seriousness of (a mistake, offence etc.) by excuses and apologies. [from 17th c.]

(obsolete) To lessen the severity of; to extenuate, moderate, qualify. [17th-18th c.]

To placate or mollify. [from 17th c.]

Source: Wiktionary


Pal"li*ate, a. Etym: [L. palliatus, fr. pallium a cloak. See Pall the garment.]

1. Covered with a mant [Obs.] Bp. Hall.

2. Eased; mitigated; alleviated. [Obs.] Bp. Fell.

Pal"li*ate, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Palliated(); p. pr. & vb. n. Palliating().]

1. To cover with a mantle or cloak; to cover up; to hide. [Obs.] Being palliated with a pilgrim's coat. Sir T. Herbert.

2. To cover with excuses; to conceal the enormity of, by excuses and apologies; to extenuate; as, to palliate faults. They never hide or palliate their vices. Swift.

3. To reduce in violence; to lessen or abate; to mitigate; to ease withhout curing; as, to palliate a disease. To palliate dullness, and give time a shove. Cowper.

Syn.

– To cover; cloak; hide; extenuate; conceal.

– To Palliate, Extenuate, Cloak. These words, as here compared, are used in a figurative sense in reference to our treatment of wrong action. We cloak in order to conceal completely. We extenuate a crime when we endeavor to show that it is less than has been supposed; we palliate a crime when we endeavor to cover or conceal its enormity, at least in part. This naturally leads us to soften some of its features, and thus palliate approaches extenuate till they have become nearly or quite identical. "To palliate is not now used, though it once was, in the sense of wholly cloaking or covering over, as it might be, our sins, but in that of extenuating; to palliate our faults is not to hide them altogether, but to seek to diminish their guilt in part." Trench.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

30 April 2024

NURSE

(verb) treat carefully; “He nursed his injured back by lying in bed several hours every afternoon”; “He nursed the flowers in his garden and fertilized them regularly”


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Coffee Trivia

According to Guinness World Records, the largest collection of coffee pots belongs to Robert Dahl (Germany) and consists of 27,390 coffee pots as of 2 November 2012, in Rövershagen, Germany.

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