1. To reduce the severity of; to relieve slightly; to mitigate: To palliate a disease or its symptoms is to make them less severe or unpleasant without removing the causes of them.
2. To ease or to reduce the effect or intensity of something: Thomas tried hard to palliate his sad feelings for the loss of his mother, but it wasn’t possible.
3. To cover up; to hide; to conceal: Jack often lies to his parents and palliates his actions by saying that it is all right because all of his friends lie to their mothers and fathers, too.
4. To make less emphatic or pronounced; to moderate, mitigate, qualify or tone down; especially, regarding one's actions or comments: Eddie palliated or tried to excuse the statement he made at the dining table during dinner when he said that his sister was engaged to be married, even though she wasn’t!
5. To take up a more moderate explanation, to compromise; to rationalize: Rebecca palliated the fact of not getting the job she applied for by saying that it was too far from her home or that the employer didn’t like her, instead of saying that she didn’t qualify for it.
6. To disguise the seriousness or gravity of an offense: There is no way to excuse or to palliate Bill's son of his bad behavior.

To palliate is to consider some wrong action or behavior to be less wrong than it has been considered to be, or someone palliates a crime in order to hide or to conceal its enormity or its brutality.

7. Etymology: from Latin palliare, "to cloak, to cover". © ALL rights are reserved.
© ALL rights are reserved.

Go to this Word A Day Revisited Index
so you can see more of Mickey Bach's cartoons.

Cloaked; covered over, concealed; superficially healed; extenuated.