Meaning & use
mitigate
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To make something harmful, painful, or risky less serious or less severe.
Grammar: Takes an object such as a risk or effect: mitigate the damage.
Patterns
- mitigate something
- mitigate the effects of something
- mitigate the risk of something
Planting trees can mitigate the effects of flooding.
The company bought insurance to mitigate the risk of loss.
Sound barriers help mitigate traffic noise near the highway.
verbtransitivelegal
In law, to make blame or punishment less serious by showing reasons that partly excuse an offense.
Grammar: Often used with a sentence or the guilt: mitigate the sentence.
Patterns
- mitigate a sentence
- mitigate someone's guilt
His clean record mitigated the sentence he received.
The lawyer argued that stress at work mitigated her client's guilt.
Cooperation with police can mitigate the penalty.
Word forms
| third person singular | mitigates |
|---|---|
| past tense | mitigated |
| past participle | mitigated |
| -ing form | mitigating |
Common combinations
- mitigate the risk
- Regular backups mitigate the risk of losing data.
- mitigate the effects
- Better drainage will mitigate the effects of heavy rain.
- mitigate the damage
- Quick action helped mitigate the damage from the fire.
- mitigate climate change
- Cities invest in clean energy to mitigate climate change.
- mitigating circumstances
- The judge considered the mitigating circumstances.
- mitigate the impact
- The government acted to mitigate the impact of the price rises.
Synonyms and how they differ
- alleviate
- Alleviate is used mostly for pain or suffering, while mitigate fits risks and damage too.
- reduce
- Reduce is the plain everyday word and can apply to any amount, but mitigate suggests lessening something harmful.
- ease
- Ease is softer and more personal, such as easing a worry, where mitigate is more formal.
- lessen
- Lessen is a neutral word for making something smaller, whereas mitigate implies a harm.
Opposites
Word family
- mitigation noun
- action that reduces how severe something is
- mitigating adjective
- reducing blame or seriousness, as in mitigating factors
- unmitigated adjective
- complete and not reduced, as in an unmitigated disaster
- mitigator noun
- something or someone that lessens a harm
Commonly confused: mitigate or militate? mitigate or negate?
mitigate vs militate
Militate against means to work against something and is not a synonym; mitigate means to reduce the severity of something.
mitigate vs negate
Negate means to cancel or make something ineffective, which goes further than mitigate.
Practice
Which word completes: The new sea wall will help ___ the damage from future storms.
Choose one answer.
Mitigate means to make damage less severe. Militate against is a different verb meaning to work against something, and medicate and meditate are unrelated.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “mitigate”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.