Sample sentences for PALLIATE - verbalworkout.com

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Definition

to make something less bad — especially pain or an offense

Congress is better at palliating the suffering of the unemployed than at creating an environment conducive to job creation.

We can palliate, but not cure the disease.

palliate = to make something less bad — especially symptoms of a disease

"Yes, yes, you are right," said he; "I have plenty of faults of my own: I know it, and I don't wish to palliate them, I assure you."
Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre
She was a less than satisfactory source of palliation, but she did give Jem a hot biscuit-and-butter which he tore in half and shared with me.
Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird

palliation = relief

(editor's note: The suffix "-tion", converts a verb into a noun that denotes the action or result of the verb. Typically, there is a slight change in the ending of the root verb, as in action, education, and observation.)

After a while, I pulled him over to the bed and we lay there together as he told me they'd started palliative chemo, but he gave it up to go to Amsterdam, even though his parents were furious.
John Green -- The Fault in Our Stars

palliative = to ease pain

(editor's note: The suffix "-ive" converts a word into an adjective; though over time, what was originally an adjective often comes to be used as a noun. The adjective pattern means tending to and is seen in words like attractive, impressive, and supportive. Examples of the noun include narrative, alternative, and detective.)

But it would only be palliative.
Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner

palliative = to make pain less bad (rather than provide a cure)

Roxana stood awhile looking mutely down on him while he writhed in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime;
Mark Twain -- Pudd'nhead Wilson

palliation = to make something less bad — especially pain or an offense

He talked about using palliative chemo—treatment that's not intended to be curative, but could ease symptoms, possibly buying a few months—and about finding ways to keep me comfortable and engaged in life as the end approached.
Randy Pausch -- The Last Lecture

palliative = making something (such as pain) less bad

She drew close to Ursula, trusting that she would know of some palliative for her attacks.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- One Hundred Years of Solitude

Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative.
George C. Marshall -- The Marshall Plan

Now, my good friend, speak out; for the time for any palliation or concealment is past, and nothing will avail Ralph Nickleby now.'
Charles Dickens -- Nicholas Nickleby

Even with this palliation, when the nuns put on this chemise on the 14th of September, they suffer from fever for three or four days.
Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables

Is there no reward, no means of palliating the injury, and of softening your heart?
James Fenimore Cooper -- The Last of the Mohicans
She could neither wonder nor condemn, but the belief of his self-conquest brought nothing consolatory to her bosom, afforded no palliation of her distress.
Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice

Virchow would write, "My politics were those of prophylaxis, my opponents preferred those of palliation."
Tracy Kidder -- Mountains Beyond Mountains

My own imperfect health has induced me to give some attention to those palliative resources which the divine mercy has placed within our reach.
George Eliot -- Middlemarch

"But dearest," he continued in a palliative voice, "don't be like it!"
Thomas Hardy -- Far from the Madding Crowd

Palliative care only.
Judy Blume -- In the Unlikely Event

This was one of those cases which no solemn deception can palliate, where no man can help; where his very Maker seems to abandon a sinner to his own devices.
Joseph Conrad -- Lord Jim
These apparent errors in the doctrine of Thwackum served greatly to palliate the contrary errors in that of Square, which our good man no less saw and condemned.
Henry Fielding -- Tom Jones

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