Mitigating

How to spell mitigating

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce mitigating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mitigating mean?

1. adjectiveServing to make an offence, fault, or situation seem less serious or more forgivable.
2. verbMaking something bad, painful, or severe less intense or harmful.

Mitigating in a sentence

• adjective

  The judge reduced the sentence after hearing the mitigating circumstances.

• verb

  The council is mitigating the flood risk by building new drainage channels.

• adjective

  Her lawyer presented several mitigating factors to the panel.

• verb

  The medication works by mitigating the worst of the symptoms.

Where does mitigating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb mitigare, which meant 'to make mild, soft, or gentle'. That verb was built from mitis, meaning 'soft' or 'mild', combined with a form of agere, 'to drive, do, or make', so the literal idea was to render something gentler. Latin used it of softening pain, calming anger, and easing harsh conditions, and that sense of taking the edge off something difficult has stayed remarkably stable over the centuries. English took it in through Old French and Latin scholarly usage in the late Middle Ages, and by the 1400s 'mitigate' was used for lessening severity or harshness. The closely related word 'mild' is not from the same root, but the gentle 'mitis' sense survives in the modern legal phrase 'mitigating circumstances', where facts soften how harshly an act is judged. The spelling stays regular if you remember the soft 'mitis' core, with a single t in the middle and the smooth -ating ending.

How the word is built

• mitig- (from Latin mitis: soft, mild)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ing (present participle/adjective suffix)