palliate

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To make (an offense or crime) seem less serious; extenuate.
2. v. To make less severe or intense; mitigate: tried unsuccessfully to palliate the widespread discontent.
3. v. To relieve the symptoms of a disease or disorder.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To cover with a cloak; clothe.
2. To hide; conceal.
3. To cover or conceal; excuse or extenuate; soften or tone down by pleading or urging extenuating circumstances, or by favorable representations: as, to palliate faults or a crime.
4. To reduce in violence; mitigate; lessen or abate: as, to palliate a disease. Synonyms Palliate, Extenuate, excuse, gloss over, apologize for. Palliate and extenuate come at essentially the same idea through different figures: palliate is to cover in part as with a cloak; extenuate is to thin away or draw out to fineness. They both refer to the effort to make an offense seem less by bringing forward considerations tending to excuse: they never mean the effort to exonerate or exculpate completely. They have had earlier differences of meaning, and palliate has a peculiar meaning of its own (see def. 3); palliate also would be likely to be used of the more serious offense; but otherwise the words are now essentially the same.
5. Eased; mitigated.
6. In zoology, having a pallium; of or pertaining to the Palliata; tectibranchiate.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. obsolete Covered with a mantle; cloaked; hidden; disguised.
2. adj. obsolete Eased; mitigated; alleviated.
3. v. obsolete To cover with a mantle or cloak; to cover up; to hide.
4. v. To cover with excuses; to conceal the enormity of, by excuses and apologies; to extenuate.
5. v. To reduce in violence; to lessen or abate; to mitigate; to ease without curing.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of
2. v. provide physical relief, as from pain