What is the meaning of 'mitigate'?

• A. to reduce as much as possible in amount or degree
• B. to make something less severe, serious, painful, harmful, unpleasant, or bad
• C. to make something seem less important
• D. to worsen a situation

Answer: (B)

Mitigate means to lessen the negative impact of something. It describes making something less severe, serious, painful, harmful, unpleasant, or bad. This idea is used in many contexts, like taking safety measures to mitigate risk, or treating an illness to mitigate symptoms, or implementing policies to mitigate the damage from a disaster. In each case, the goal is to reduce harm or hardship, not to make it disappear entirely or to make it seem less important, and not to make things worse.

So the best match is the sense of reducing harm or severity. The other ideas push in different directions: one suggests an extreme or maximal reduction, which isn’t implied; another means to downplay importance, which is a different concept; and the last is the opposite of mitigation.