alleviation

Etymology

It is borrowed from Medieval Latin alleviātiō (“relief, easing”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} frequent in British sources from the 12th century,^[2] a noun of action from the stem of alleviō (“to lighten, relieve”),^[2][3] formed from ad- (“to”) and levis (“light”),^[2][3] from Proto-Indo-European *legwh- (“not heavy, having little weight”).^[3] The Shorter Oxford also allows a source in Old French,^[7] and the OED compares Middle French aleviacion, recorded from the 14th century, earliest in a medical text.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Relief or mitigation of pain or sickness: about 1425, in a translation of Guy de Chauliac's Grande Chirurgie.^[2][5] Etymonline likewise gives the early 15th century and Merriam-Webster the 15th century,^[3][4] while Dictionary.com dates the word to 1615–25.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb meant literally to lift or lighten and figuratively to lighten a burden, to comfort,^[3] and the Shorter Oxford still has the noun for the lightening of weight as well as of pain.^[7] The first English use is medical; the other translation of the same text uses lyȝtnynge in the same passage.^[5] Johnson (1755) distinguished the act of making light or allaying, as in South's "alleviations of faults", from that which eases pain or extenuates a fault, as in Locke.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 1425 – relief, mitigation, in a medical translation.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of alleviating or the state of being alleviated; relief, mitigation: The new drug brought some alleviation of her symptoms.^[4][2][7]
2. Something that alleviates.^[4][2][8]

Related words

• alleviate
• levity

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.