palliative
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Minimising the progression of a disease and relieving undesirable symptoms for as long as possible, rather than attempting to cure the disease.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
paleeuhtivSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpæliətɪv
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
medicine
Minimising the progression of a disease and relieving undesirable symptoms for as long as possible, rather than attempting to cure the (usually incurable) disease.
Serving to palliate; serving to extenuate or mitigate.
noun
medicine
Something that palliates, particularly a palliative medicine.
Word at a Glance
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Formality
- Technical
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.