assuage

present singular third person assuages · participle present assuaging · participle past assuaged · past assuaged · alternative asswage · alternative suage · alternative swage · alternative tasswage

1. transitiveTo lessen the intensity of, to mitigate or relieve (hunger, emotion, pain, etc.).

   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.

   4 more examples

   Refreshing winds the summer's heat assuage.

   1705, J[oseph] Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c. in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703, London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC

   to assuage the sorrows of a desolate old man

   1796, Edmund Burke, A Letter from the Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord, on the Attacks Made upon Him and His Pension, […], London: […] J. Owen, […], and F[rancis] and C[harles] Rivington, […], →OCLC

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

   1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza CX

   Jaurès's ambition was not to intensify but to assuage conflicts, antagonisms, and enmity of every kind: the fundamental ideas of Marxism, he believed, did not signify a breach of historical continuity but appealed to the deepest moral instincts of mankind.

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 116

2. transitiveTo pacify or soothe (someone).
3. intransitiveobsoleteTo calm down, become less violent (of passion, hunger etc.); to subside, to abate.