Meaning & use

relieve

verb·Everyday

To ease or lessen pain, discomfort, or a burden.

See it in a sentence

The medicine helped relieve her headache within about twenty minutes.

Volunteers arrived to relieve the exhausted rescue workers after a long night.

A note on using this word

Relieve someone of a duty or position is a polite, sometimes ironic, way of saying they are being removed from it.

Words with a similar meaning

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Words with an opposite meaning

aggravateworsen

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