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Assuage Stays Sweet Over Time
If you’ve ever wanted to learn how the, ahem, assuage gets made, today is your lucky day—we’ve got a sweet story to quell your hunger for word knowledge. Assuage comes from the Latin adjective suavis, meaning—you guessed it—“sweet.” (Sweet itself is also a distant relation.) Perhaps recalling Mary Poppins (as played by Julie Andrews in the titular film) singing to the Banks children will make the link indelible: “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” To assuage something painful or distressing, such as fear, guilt, or grief, is to lessen its intensity the way, say, saccharine grape flavoring helps mask some of the bitterness of cough syrup. Similarly, to assuage hunger or thirst—as for lexicographical trivia, perhaps—is to end it by satisfying it fully. We hope you’re satisfied!
Examples of assuage in a Sentence
Jo McGowan, Commonweal, 5 May 2006
But for the second exam, my pretest diet included yogurt and ice cream (without pieces), which assuaged my hunger, and the cleansing was stimulated by a glass of salty liquid midafternoon.
—Jane E. Brody, New York Times, 12 July 2005
Whatever arrangements such mothers willingly make for their children, whatever strategies they employ to relieve their guilt, whatever books they read to assuage their anxiety—all of that is their business, not mine.
—Caitlin Flanagan, Atlantic, March 2004
As I've told Jody on numerous occasions, the best way for her to assuage my guilt is to hit it big in the Internet gold rush and then retire …
—Matthew Miller, New Republic, 17 Jan. 2000
He couldn't assuage his guilt over the divorce.
a mother cooing to her toddler and assuaging his fear of the dark
Téa Kvetenadze, New York Daily News, 28 June 2025
Meanwhile, widow Marta and her teenage daughter Rosa slave away in the kitchen, clean the threadbare bedrooms, and assuage the guests who seem to have holed up there permanently to ride out the war.
—Erik Morse, Vogue, 26 June 2025
Gulf states with strong ties to President Donald Trump are emerging from the war between Israel and Iran with greater regional influence and with some of their longstanding security concerns over Iranian power assuaged.
—Amira El-Fekki, MSNBC Newsweek, 24 June 2025
Many industry commentators thought the FTC’s case was unfounded from the beginning, and the trial has done nothing to assuage their concerns.
—Mackenzie France, Boston Herald, 18 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for assuage
Cite this Entry
“Assuage.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assuage. Accessed 8 Jul. 2025.
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