Mediate

How to spell mediate

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce mediate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mediate mean?

1. verbTo intervene between disputing parties in order to help them reach an agreement.

Mediate in a sentence

• A neutral lawyer was hired to mediate the contract dispute.

• The manager agreed to mediate between the two feuding departments.

Where does mediate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin medius, meaning 'middle' or 'in the centre', the same root that gives us 'medium', 'median' and 'medieval'. From medius Latin built the verb mediare, literally 'to be in the middle' or 'to divide down the centre', and its past participle mediatus supplied the form English eventually adopted. English took it on in the sixteenth century with the sense of placing oneself between two parties to settle their differences, exactly the position of someone standing in the middle. The idea of being literally in the middle is a useful memory aid for the spelling, because the heart of the word is the unchanged Latin medi-, followed simply by -ate. A related cousin, 'immediate', uses the same root with a negative prefix to mean 'with nothing in the middle', that is, without delay.

How the word is built

• medi- (from Latin medius: middle)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)