remedy/remediate

[six_crazy_guys]

So I've gotten embroiled in an lengthy argument with an acquaintance over "remedy" and "remediate". Now I'm perfectly willing to admit they have some difference in usage (e.g. "remediate" is less common except in legal writing, and for some reason is used a LOT intransitively in education contexts), but I contend both verbs are perfectly legitimate

Comments

[dustthouart]

My impression is that the educational use of "remediate" is a backformation from "remedial" which comes from "remedy".

The redirection to "mediate" is a meaning coming from "re-" + "mediate" (ie "mediate again"), a meaning totally unrelated to remedy.

So if I were being prescriptionist, I would say that "remediate" to mean "rectify, correct, fix" is wrong, and they should actually be using "redress", "remedy", "rectify" or another word like that. I mean it's not like English has a shortage of such words.

I'm not particularly prescriptionistic, though.

As another bit of info, Firefox doesn't think that remediate is a word. However Firefox also doesn't think many of my favorite totally legitimate words, such as "nonfeasance", are words.

[gbcahawk]

I have never ever heard of "remediate", and I have worked for companies where, in order for situations to be remedied, a lot of written legal correspondence had to be produced. "Remediate" was never used in that correspondence.

On hearing "remediate" I immediately thought "irregardless".

[paulistano]

Yeah, I've never heard "remediate" either and my wife is a Special Ed teacher. it reminds me of "notate," which may be an acceptable form of the word now, but it still hurts my ears.

[sollersuk]

In my schooldays in the UK "remedy" was strictly a noun and not to be used as a verb.

[ubykhlives]

I'm afraid I have to come down on your friend's side. To start with, Merriam-Webster Online lists the word remediate only as an adjective, rhyming with immediate and being an archaic synonym for "remedial". And from a descriptive point of view, Google searching gives "remediate" overwhelmingly in legal and scientific contexts, and "to remedy" outweighs it more than ten to one.

The OED distinction might be pretty fine, but it is there. Google gives an interesting example: you can "remediate" asbestos, for instance (that is, to use the OED definition: "to provide a remedy for, redress, counteract; to take remedial action against"), but you can't really "remedy" asbestos (that is, "to put right, reform (a state of things); to rectify, make good"). You can only "remedy" an asbestos problem - an abstraction, not a concrete thing.

So no, I don't think that "remediate" and "remedy" are the same thing. The OED glosses are similar, but are subtly different.

[tamtrible]

However, imo the difference is subtle enough that often they *can* be used essentially interchangeably, though "remediate" makes you sound like you ate a dictionary.

[six_crazy_guys]

In my case, it's just a Gallicism: so many Latin verbs in -er ends in -ate in English it's common for French speakers to add unnecessary -ate's to verbs (we have similar problem with the -ic/-ical suffixes, which are sometimes interchangeable, sometimes have been in the past, but no longer are, and very often are not at all, e.g. "commonsensical")