ameliorate
verb
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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.
Meghan L. O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff, Foreign Affairs, 18 June 2024
Taken together, the new papers could help researchers learn how to ameliorate the harms space travel can cause, Afshin Beheshti, a co-author of the work and a researcher with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, says to the AP.
—Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 June 2024
In the past, the risk was ameliorated through the constant publishing of AI science to benefit all of humankind—open-sourcing the research models, in other words.
—Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 6 June 2024
But the long-run solution to ameliorating the strife on the continent lies in making the investments required to improve governance and build stronger states.
—Comfort Ero, Foreign Affairs, 12 Dec. 2023
See all Example Sentences for ameliorate 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ameliorate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near ameliorate
Cite this Entry
“Ameliorate.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ameliorate. Accessed 7 Jul. 2024.
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ameliorate
verb
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