militate or mitigate?
These two often-confused words have different, mutually exclusive meanings and they function in different ways. Mitigate needs a noun object and means "to lessen the impact or degree of seriousness of something undesirable": A six-month suspended sentence unfairly mitigates the seriousness of a vehicular homicide.There were mitigating circumstances. Militate does not take a noun object, but is followed by a preposition, often against, plus a noun. It means "to have an influence, especially a negative one, on something": Trade sanctions militate [not mitigate] against international cooperation.
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