assuage

• asswage (obsolete)

Middle English aswagen, from Old French asuagier (“to appease, to calm”), from Vulgar Latin *assuaviō (“I sweeten, I 'butter up', I calm”), derived from ad- + suavis (“sweet”) + -ō.

• IPA^(key): /əˈsweɪdʒ/

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• Hyphenation: as‧suage
• Rhymes: -eɪdʒ

assuage (third-person singular simple present assuages, present participle assuaging, simple past and past participle assuaged)

1. (transitive) To lessen the intensity of, to mitigate or relieve (hunger, emotion, pain etc.).
   • Addison

     Refreshing winds the summer's heat assuage.

   • Burke

     to assuage the sorrows of a desolate old man

   • Byron

     the fount at which the panting mind assuages / her thirst of knowledge

   • 1864 November 21, Abraham Lincoln (signed) or John Hay, letter to Mrs. Bixby in Boston

     I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost.

2. (transitive) To pacify or soothe (someone).
3. (intransitive, obsolete) To calm down, become less violent (of passion, hunger etc.); to subside, to abate.

• assuagement
• assuager
• unassuaged

• assuage in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• assuage in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “assuage” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.

• sausage

assuage

1. Alternative form of aswagen