mitigate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to lessen in force or intensity, as wrath, grief, harshness, or pain; moderate.
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to make less severe.
to mitigate a punishment.
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to reduce the risk or impact of harmful conditions or events.
To mitigate flood damage, new building regulations are being developed.
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to make (a person, one's state of mind, disposition, etc.) milder or more gentle; mollify; appease.
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Environmental Science. to restore or recreate (a habitat) in order to make up for losses due to development or agriculture.
No one has tried anything on this scale before to mitigate the grasslands bird habitat.
verb (used without object)
verb
Usage
Mitigate is sometimes wrongly used where militate is meant: his behaviour militates (not mitigates ) against his chances of promotion
Commonly Confused
Mitigate, whose central meaning is “to lessen” or “to make less severe,” is sometimes confused with militate, which means “to have effect or influence; weigh on.” This mix-up often occurs in the use of the phrase mitigate against, as follows: This criticism in no way mitigates (read militates ) against your going ahead with your research. Although this use of mitigate occasionally occurs in edited writing, it is rare and is widely regarded as an error.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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mitigationnoun
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mitigatornoun
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overmitigateverb
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mitigableadjective
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mitigativeadjective
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unmitigableadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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mitigatesimple
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mitigatessimple
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have mitigatedperfect
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has mitigatedperfect
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am mitigatingprogressive
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are mitigatingprogressive
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is mitigatingprogressive
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have been mitigatingperfect progressive
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has been mitigatingperfect progressive
Past
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mitigatedsimple
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had mitigatedperfect
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was mitigatingprogressive
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were mitigatingprogressive
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had been mitigatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of mitigate
First recorded in 1375–1425; late Middle English mitigaten, from Latin mītigātus (past participle of mītigāre “to calm, soften, soothe”), equivalent to mīt(is) “mild, soft, gentle” + -ig- (combining form of agere “to do, cause to do, make”) + -ātus verb suffix; see -ate 1
Explanation
Choose the verb mitigate when something lessens the unpleasantness of a situation. You can mitigate your parents' anger by telling them you were late to dinner because you were helping your elderly neighbor. The somewhat formal verb mitigate comes from the Latin roots mītis, "soft," and agere, "to do/act," which add up to "to soften." It is often used with words that indicate an outcome or something harmful. When you buy car insurance, you are trying to mitigate the risks involved with driving. Sunscreen is used to mitigate the effects of the sun on your skin.
Vocabulary lists containing mitigate
Grade 10, List 6
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This Week in Words: August 25 - 31, 2018
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This Week in Words: October 6 - 12, 2018
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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:
Higher fares helped American mitigate nearly half of the impact of an 83% increase in fuel costs, the company said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
They don’t care about Canada taking steps to mitigate global warming.
From Slate ● Jul. 21, 2026
Other countries are far less likely to have the covered venues of Atlanta, Dallas Houston and Vancouver to mitigate it.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
Meehan said Knocking does its best to mitigate that possibility by accepting returns up to six months after purchase.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 19, 2026
In another time, if I felt it unavoidable, I would have presented the fact solely to mitigate the ill sweep of my own activities.
From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee
"The external intervention we need is from government in the shape of grassroots music festival tax relief. Festivals eat and drink risk, but tax relief mitigates some of that risk."
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2026
Moore said the facility has remained at 45 degrees, which mitigates the risk of it becoming a biohazard due to food spoilage.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 21, 2026
While China relies on oil imports, "it mitigates this exposure through diversified suppliers, ties with Iran, substantial strategic reserves and continued reliance on coal", she said.
From Barron's ● Apr. 14, 2026
But he added that the products Arm designs for that part of the market come with “dramatically smaller royalties,” which mitigates the potential impact on Arm’s business.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 4, 2026
"If your majesty mitigates the edicts," writes the cardinal, "affairs will become worse in Flanders than they are in France."
From History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, Vols. 1 and 2 by Prescott, William Hickling
“Rising component costs are mitigated given Apple’s bargaining power against consumers and the supply chain.”
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 14, 2026
The attention economy is often portrayed helpfully by media outlets as an individual problem to be mitigated by reducing our own dependence on screens and devices.
From Salon ● Jul. 13, 2026
Given the power of some AI models, there’s a question of whether governments regulate how this technology is rolled out, if it hurts job creation, and how that is mitigated.
From Barron's ● Jun. 11, 2026
Taneja noted that the company’s existing zero-trust architecture, network segmentation and secondary controls would have mitigated the flaws that were found.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 10, 2026
They don’t see any hierarchical gap between themselves and the pilots in the air, and to them, mitigated speech from a pilot doesn’t mean the speaker is being appropriately deferential to a superior.
From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell
Abatzoglou hypothesized the region’s link between wildfires and soil moisture could cause the mitigating effects of the preceding El Niño to linger longer.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 22, 2026
The TD Cowen analysts also noted that the two reports this week said the items that won’t be served were toppings, rather than Taco Bell’s core menu items, thus mitigating the risk to sales.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 9, 2026
Character can serve as a mitigating factor in the face of disaster, while the absence of character often has the opposite effect.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
The purpose of these laws, Jackson wrote, was to “vindicate property rights” by mitigating “concerns associated with violations of those rights by armed individuals on private land.”
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2026
I had thought of telling him about the rash too, as a mitigating circumstance, but decide that our relationship is not at a point where I want to be discussing my body.
From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
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.