mitigation

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

• n. relief; alleviation

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

• n. The act of mitigating, or the state of being mitigated; abatement or diminution of anything painful, harsh, severe, afflictive, or calamitous.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

• n. The act of mitigating, or the state of being mitigated; alleviation; abatement or diminution of anything harsh, painful, severe, afflictive, calamitous, or the like.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• n. a partial excuse to mitigate censure; an attempt to represent an offense as less serious than it appears by showing mitigating circumstances
• n. the action of lessening in severity or intensity
• n. to act in such a way as to cause an offense to seem less serious