assuagement

assuage +‎ -ment

assuagement (countable and uncountable, plural assuagements)

1. The action of assuaging; appeasement.
   • 1567, Arthur Golding, translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 11, lines 517-520,

     He many woordes of comfort spake her feare away too chace,

     But nought hee could perswade therein too make her like the cace.

     This last asswagement of her greef he added in the end,

     Which was the onely thing that made her loving hart too bend:

   • 1659, Thomas Stanley, The History of Philosophy, Volume Three, Part Five, Epicurus, translated from the work of Pierre Gassendi, London: Humphrey Moseley and Thomas Dring, Chapter 23,

     […] the asswagement of his discontent consists in two things, formerly prescribed as remedies against corporeall pain; viz. Diversion of his thoughts from his losse, or the cause of it, and an application of them to those things, which he knowes to be gratefull and pleasant to his mind.

   • 1926, H. G. Wells, The World of William Clissold, Book Four, Section 7,

     I had thought two years ago that sex was simply a sensuous craving, an appetite needing assuagement and trailing with it a sense of beauty.

2. The condition of being assuaged.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book VI, Canto Five, Stanza 40,

     So all that night they past in great disease,

     Till that the morning, bringing earely light

     To guide mens labours, brought them also ease,

     And some asswagement of their painefull plight.

   • 1797, Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, or The Confessional of the Black Penitents, London: T. Cadell Junior & W. Davies, Volume II, Chapter 7, pp. 234-235,

     This was the sole consideration, that afforded any degree of assuagement to her sufferings.

   • 1928, Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness, Chapter Seven, 2,

     Writing, it was like a heavenly balm, it was like the flowing out of deep waters, it was like the lifting of a load from the spirit; it brought with it a sense of relief, of assuagement.

   • 1959, Mervyn Peake, Titus Alone, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, Chapter 34,

     He leaned forward pressing the tightened muscles below his ribs and then began to rock back and forth, like a pendulum. So regular was the rocking that it would seem that no assuagement of grief could result from so mechanical a rhythm.

3. An assuaging medicine or application.
   • 1835, Richard Chenevix Trench, “A Legend of Toledo” in The Story of Justin Martyr, and Other Poems,

     Far down below the Christian captives pine

     In dungeon depths, and whoso dares to bring

     Assuagements for their wounds, or food, or wine,

     Must brave the fiercest vengeance of the king.

• (action of assuaging): alleviation
• (condition of being assuaged): relief, respite