mitigated

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of mitigate.

   The company has mitigated most of the security risks found in the audit.

   The damage was mitigated by the fire crew's quick response.

   Note

   One regular spelling covers the simple past and the participle, which is common in the passive: the risks were mitigated. Its object is the bad thing made less severe, a risk, a charge or a loss. Using it to mean helped prevent a problem, rather than lessened one already there, is nonstandard and is best kept out of careful writing.

2. 2
   adjective

   Of a problem or flaw, lessened or reduced in degree and so made better.

   Engineers tracked every mitigated hazard until the plant reopened.

   Pleading guilty early can earn a defendant a mitigated penalty.

   Similarreduced, lessened, alleviated

   Oppositeaggravated

   Note

   The adjective is used of something bad that has been softened, never of something good made better: a mitigated hazard, a mitigated penalty. Penalties and sentences are its natural home, and Herman Melville's Billy Budd (1924) has accused men pleading guilty in hopes of a mitigated penalty. It is not compared; a thing is mitigated or it is not.

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