ameliorate
verb
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").
Synonyms
Examples of ameliorate in a Sentence
Edward F. Sherman, Texas Law Review, June 1998
And, after all, some illnesses are psychogenic. Many can be at least ameliorated by a positive cast of mind.
—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, 1996
trying to ameliorate the suffering of people who have lost their jobs
This medicine should help ameliorate the pain.
Bruce Fein, Baltimore Sun, 23 Jan. 2025
Ultimately, what the San Francisco panelists all agreed on is the next steps should concentrate on how to better reduce the spread of H5N1 or any other serious viral event and how to ameliorate the devastating effects of post-infection inflammation.
—Steve Brozak, Forbes, 21 Jan. 2025
That kind of dedicated team, which can help ameliorate the impact of disasters, comes only with the scale of a massive company like Walmart.
—Booth Moore, WWD, 8 Jan. 2025
Researchers say that the technology amplifies existing biases in hiring processes instead of ameliorating them.
—Melvin Backman, Quartz, 5 Nov. 2024
See all Example Sentences for ameliorate 
Cite this Entry
“Ameliorate.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ameliorate. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.
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ameliorate
verb
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