PALLIATES
Verb
palliates
Third-person singular simple present indicative form of palliate
Anagrams
• Espaillat, aliseptal, pallasite
Source: Wiktionary
PALLIATE
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