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Assuage Stays Sweet Over Time
If you’ve ever wanted to learn how the, ahem, assuage gets made, today is your lucky day—we’ve got a sweet story to quell your hunger for word knowledge. Assuage comes from the Latin adjective suavis, meaning—you guessed it—“sweet.” (Sweet itself is also a distant relation.) Perhaps recalling Mary Poppins (as played by Julie Andrews in the titular film) singing to the Banks children will make the link indelible: “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” To assuage something painful or distressing, such as fear, guilt, or grief, is to lessen its intensity the way, say, saccharine grape flavoring helps mask some of the bitterness of cough syrup. Similarly, to assuage hunger or thirst—as for lexicographical trivia, perhaps—is to end it by satisfying it fully. We hope you’re satisfied!
Synonyms
Examples of assuage in a Sentence
Jo McGowan, Commonweal, 5 May 2006
But for the second exam, my pretest diet included yogurt and ice cream (without pieces), which assuaged my hunger, and the cleansing was stimulated by a glass of salty liquid midafternoon.
—Jane E. Brody, New York Times, 12 July 2005
Whatever arrangements such mothers willingly make for their children, whatever strategies they employ to relieve their guilt, whatever books they read to assuage their anxiety—all of that is their business, not mine.
—Caitlin Flanagan, Atlantic, March 2004
As I've told Jody on numerous occasions, the best way for her to assuage my guilt is to hit it big in the Internet gold rush and then retire …
—Matthew Miller, New Republic, 17 Jan. 2000
He couldn't assuage his guilt over the divorce.
a mother cooing to her toddler and assuaging his fear of the dark
Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 20 Nov. 2024
As President-elect Donald Trump doubles down on his mass deportation plan, some Republicans are trying to assuage fears amid growing questions of who will be forced out of the country.
—Suzanne Gamboa, NBC News, 8 Nov. 2024
Thankfully, Evolv’s directors are overhauling governance and assuaging investors.
—Jesse Silvertown, Forbes, 5 Nov. 2024
On the medicine side of things, Kennedy’s omission of vaccines from his latest policy discussions isn’t assuaging public health experts’ fears.
—Meg Tirrell, CNN, 30 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for assuage 
Dictionary Entries Near assuage
Cite this Entry
“Assuage.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assuage. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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