Pal"li*ate (?), a. [L. palliatus,
fr. pallium a cloak. See Pall the garment.]
1. Covered with a mant&?;e; cloaked;
disguised. [Obs.] Bp. Hall.
2. Eased; mitigated; alleviated. [Obs.]
Bp. Fell.
Pal"li*ate (?), v. t. [imp. & p.
p. Palliated(?); p. pr. & vb. n.
Palliating(?).] 1. To cover with a mantle
or cloak; to cover up; to hide. [Obs.]
Being palliated with a pilgrim's
coat.
Sir T. Herbert.
2. To cover with excuses; to conceal the
enormity of, by excuses and apologies; to extenuate; as, to
palliate faults.
They never hide or palliate their
vices.
Swift.
3. To reduce in violence; to lessen or abate;
to mitigate; to ease withhout curing; as, to palliate a
disease.
To palliate dullness, and give time a
shove.
Cowper.
Syn. -- To cover; cloak; hide; extenuate; conceal. -- To
Palliate, Extenuate, Cloak. These words, as here
compared, are used in a figurative sense in reference to our treatment
of wrong action. We cloak in order to conceal completely. We
extenuate a crime when we endeavor to show that it is
less than has been supposed; we palliate a crime when we
endeavor to cover or conceal its enormity, at least in
part. This naturally leads us to soften some of its features, and
thus palliate approaches extenuate till they have become
nearly or quite identical. "To palliate is not now used,
though it once was, in the sense of wholly cloaking or covering over,
as it might be, our sins, but in that of extenuating; to
palliate our faults is not to hide them altogether, but to seek
to diminish their guilt in part." Trench.
