ameliorate
Usage
What are other ways to say ameliorate?
The formal word ameliorate implies improving oppressive, unjust, or difficult conditions: to ameliorate working conditions. Improve usually implies remedying a lack or a felt need: to improve a process, oneself (as by gaining more knowledge). To better is to improve conditions which, though not bad, are unsatisfying: to better an attempt, oneself (as by gaining a higher salary).
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
His writings undergirded his cabinet’s reforms in the 1870s to ameliorate living and working conditions.
From The Wall Street Journal β Jul. 12, 2026
Exercising for two hours a day can partially ameliorate this issue, but it doesn’t prevent the problem entirely.
From Slate β Mar. 1, 2026
According to state projections, the average amount of water delivered from the Delta to Southern California could decrease by between 13% and 23% within two decades unless measures are taken to ameliorate those declines.
From Los Angeles Times β Aug. 10, 2025
The mandatory two-stop has been arrived at as a necessary evil - introducing an element of artificiality to ameliorate a specific problem.
From BBC β Mar. 11, 2025
The accused have told me and their counsel have told me that the accused who were all leaders of the non-European population were motivated entirely by a desire to ameliorate these grievances.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
But a strange, melancholic case of timing ameliorates the documentary’s primary flaw: It didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.
From Salon β Dec. 19, 2024
"Overall, greater international co-operation is needed to ensure that ESG and climate transition-related practices progress in a manner that ameliorates the current market fragmentation, and strengthens investor confidence and market integrity."
From Reuters β Oct. 4, 2021
Charity, while wonderful, ameliorates the symptoms of inequality, but it does not address its root causes.
From The Guardian β Jan. 27, 2020
You say “at first” you turned down their advances, as if that somehow ameliorates your later decision to accept their advances.
From Slate β Oct. 28, 2019
Misfortunes are, in morals, what bitters are in medicine: each is at first disagreeable; but as the bitters act as corroborants to the stomach, so adversity chastens and ameliorates the disposition.—From the French.
From Many Thoughts of Many Minds A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age by Louis Klopsch
On that, Buchbinder is optimistic that a key cause of rising rates, higher energy costs, will be ameliorated in coming months.
From MarketWatch β Aug. 14, 2026
The 40-foot elevation drop from the General Hospital forecourt to the commercial hub will be ameliorated by raising the low area about 20 feet.
From Los Angeles Times β Jun. 12, 2026
It would have been a lot to ask that Simkhovitch, idealistic and self-sacrificing, predict that immigrant poverty and its housing conditions would be ameliorated with time.
From The Wall Street Journal β Feb. 24, 2026
Medication also ameliorated the physical symptoms of anxiety and hypervigilance.
From BBC β Jan. 25, 2025
We have ameliorated on a planetary scale injustices that only recently were global and endemic.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Her conundrum has lately been making me think about Daniel Shapiro's fascinating book, "Negotiating the Nonnegotiable," and his clear-eyed examination of the roles of tribalism and identity in accelerating conflict — and in ameliorating it.
From Salon β Apr. 23, 2025
Whatever you think of their intended goals, they would also have an unintended effect of ameliorating one of the worst features of the property tax: its localism.
From Slate β Jan. 6, 2025
The researchers employed a novel computational method developed earlier by Morgun and Shulzhenko, transkingdom network analysis, to uncover TXN's mechanism for ameliorating metabolic syndrome.
From Science Daily β Sep. 21, 2023
If Petro can fill the role of a balanced mediator, he stands to gain regionally by reviving commercial relations between Colombia and Venezuela, and internationally by ameliorating one of the hemisphere’s most nagging crises.
From Los Angeles Times β Apr. 20, 2023
She had a notion about the air down here and its ameliorating effects on the circulation.
From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead
Vocabulary lists containing ameliorate
100 SAT Words Beginning with "A"
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The Crucible
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Frankenstein
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