When to Use Mitigate

When to Use Mitigate

You might recall I mentioned that during any time of crisis, the not-so-often-heard words come out of the woodwork. We discussed the prevalence of proximity or should I say the misuse of close proximity earlier, but it’s long past time to delve into when to use mitigate and mitigation.

Nowadays it seems as if you can’t read an article without seeing mitigate or mitigation numerous times, and you certainly can’t listen to any experts or analysts on TV without being bombarded with the words.

I shouldn’t complain because in most cases, they use it properly, but the improper part might be that they use it so much (or even at all).

These briefings from analysts and experts are meant for normal, everyday people. As such you’d think they would adapt their speech to accommodate it, not try to use words a lot of people may not understand.

And before you say “mitigate isn’t bad,” remember that it may not be difficult for you to understand, but for millions of others it is. And the hard, cold facts are that everyone is equally susceptible to the virus, not just the educated, so everyone needs to be informed.

So let’s look at mitigate and see what it really means.

Merriam Webster’s has this to say:

to make (something) less severe, violent, cruel, intense, or painful: soften, alleviate

They had an example sentence that seemed appropriate for what’s going on now.

medicines used to mitigate a patient’s suffering.

But could we have expressed that better? I think “medicines used to ease a patient’s suffering” or “medicines used to lessen a patient’s suffering” would have worked as well, if not better. They mean the same thing and would have been understood by more people.

I have a huge problem with dictionaries (and grammar books/style guides, etc.). They seem to go to great lengths to confuse people, make it as difficult to understand as possible, but that’s for another post. For now, let’s look at another definition.

Chamber’s Dictionary

To mollify, appease
To make more easily borne
To lessen the severity, violence or evil of
To temper

The above definitions are all fine, but then again, they could all have been made simpler. We didn’t need mollify. And “to make more easily borne” could have been “to make easier to bear.” I think you see the point.

Last night, my wife was watching TV while I typed on the iPad, and after hearing mitigate and mitigation used so often, I began to count. During the next hour, I heard a form of the word used fourteen times by four people. When I did a search of the usage using Google’s Ngram tool, I was surprised to see it was used much more often decades ago, peaking in the early 1800s, hitting a low point during WWII, then rising to almost its previous high in 2000.

Tags: editing, grammar, misused words