Word of the Day

: July 21, 2023

ameliorate

verb uh-MEE-lee-uh-rayt

What It Means

Ameliorate is a formal word that means "to make something, such as a problem, better or more tolerable."

// The council is reviewing a plan that aims to ameliorate the town's affordable housing crisis.

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ameliorate in Context

"With many institutions embracing diversified forms of student enrollment, we believe that colleges and universities must be able to evaluate the experiences of all their students if they are going to truly embrace equity. To achieve this, leaders must ... strategically act to ameliorate any differences across student groups. While this might seem ... obvious, our research revealed that not many colleges are presently engaging in such comparisons." — Joshua Travis Brown and Joseph M. Kush, Inside Higher Ed, 15 June 2023

Did You Know?

Ameliorate traces back to melior, a Latin adjective meaning "better," and is a rather formal synonym of the verbs better and improve. When is it better to use ameliorate? Allow us to improve your understanding: if a situation is bad, ameliorate indicates that the conditions have been made more tolerable. Thus, one might refer to medicine that ameliorates pain from an injury, a loss of wages ameliorated by unemployment benefits, or a harsh law ameliorated by special exceptions. Improve and better apply when something bad is getting better or being made better (as in "the weather improved" or "she bettered her lot in life"), and they should always be chosen over ameliorate when something good is getting better still ("he improved his successful program," "she bettered her impressive scores").