Mitigation

How to spell mitigation

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce mitigation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mitigation mean?

1. nounThe action of making something less harmful, serious, or severe.
2. nounCircumstances that reduce a defendant's blame or lessen a sentence.

Mitigation in a sentence

• The council invested in flood mitigation along the riverbank.

• The lawyer presented several points in mitigation before sentencing.

• Risk mitigation is a standard part of every project plan.

• His guilty plea was treated as a factor in mitigation.

Where does mitigation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb mitigare, which meant 'to soften' or 'to make gentle'. That verb was built from mitis, meaning 'mild' or 'soft', joined to a form of agere, meaning 'to make' or 'to drive', so the literal idea was 'to render mild'. The related noun mitigatio described the act of soothing or easing something harsh. English took the word in through Old French during the late 1300s, originally with the sense of relieving pain or calming anger. Over time it broadened into its modern meaning of reducing the severity of almost anything, from a legal punishment to a flood risk. The single t and single g sit on either side of an unstressed vowel, which is exactly where careful writers can stumble.

How the word is built

• miti- (from Latin mitis: mild, soft)
• -ig- (from agere: to make, drive)
• -ation (noun suffix)