Choose the verb mitigate when something lessens the unpleasantness of a situation. You can mitigate your parents' anger by telling them you were late to dinner because you were helping your elderly neighbor. Mitigation is the act of lessening or easing the harshness of a punishment, a fine, or someone's pain. In the legal world, a lawyer might ask a judge for mitigation of a particularly harsh sentence. Definition : Mitigation The lessening or minimizing of the adverse impacts of a hazardous event. Annotation: The adverse impacts of hazards, in particular natural hazards, often cannot be prevented fully, but their scale or severity can be substantially lessened by various strategies and actions. Mitigation means the act of making something less severe, unpleasant, or harmful. Learn how to use this word in different contexts, such as stress, punishment, climate change, and more, with examples and word history.