PALLIATE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Palliate

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verb

Palliate v. t. (past & past part. palliated; pres. part. palliating)

To cover with a mantle or cloak; to cover up; to hide. (Obs.) "Being palliated with a pilgrim's coat."

To cover with excuses; to conceal the enormity of, by excuses and apologies; to extenuate; as, to palliate faults. "They never hide or palliate their vices."

To reduce in violence; to lessen or abate; to mitigate; to ease without curing; as, to palliate a disease. "To palliate dullness, and give time a shove."

Synonyms: To cover; cloak; hide; extenuate; conceal. To Palliate, Extenuate, Cloak. These words, as here compared, are used in a figurative sense in reference to our treatment of wrong action. We cloak in order to conceal completely. We extenuate a crime when we endeavor to show that it is less than has been supposed; we palliate a crime when we endeavor to cover or conceal its enormity, at least in part. This naturally leads us to soften some of its features, and thus palliate approaches extenuate till they have become nearly or quite identical. "To palliate is not now used, though it once was, in the sense of wholly cloaking or covering over, as it might be, our sins, but in that of extenuating; to palliate our faults is not to hide them altogether, but to seek to diminish their guilt in part."

adjective

Palliate adj.

Covered with a mantle; cloaked; hidden; disguised. (Obs.)

Eased; mitigated; alleviated. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Palliate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Palliate" Quotes from Famous Books

... Adam's whole posterity.[560] Here Irenaeus followed sayings of Paul, but adopted the words rather than the sense; for, in the first place, like the Apologists, he very strongly emphasises the elements that palliate man's fall[561] and, secondly, he contemplates the fall as having a teleological significance. It is the fall itself and not, as in Paul's case, the consequences of the fall, that he thus views; for he says that disobedience was conducive to man's development. ...

— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... good philosophy, Mr. Ratcliffe," answered Miss Vere; "but, excuse me, it by no means emboldens me to visit, at this late hour, a person whose extravagance of imagination you yourself can only palliate." ...

— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... which a mother is not willing for her daughter to practice. Decent women should not live with licentious husbands in the relation of wife. As society is now, good, pure women, by so living, cover up and palliate immorality and help to violate the law of monogamy. Women must take the social helm into their own hands and not permit the men of their own circle, any more than the ...

— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... of rebellion, of dissatisfaction with myself, wore gradually away, and by the time I reached Chicago I had resolved to climb high. "I will carry mother and Jessie to comfort and to some small share, at least, in the world of art," was my resolve. In this way I sought to palliate my selfish plan. ...

— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... facts for his fancy. He may end (like Carlyle and Freeman) by maintaining that the Norman Conquest was a Saxon Conquest. He may end in utter unreason—because he has a reason. A man who loves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870. But a man who loves France for being France will improve the army of 1870. This is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance of the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism ...

— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

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