Palliate means to excuse, alleviate, or otherwise diminish the severity of something. You may improve a person's life by palliating their suffering. On the other hand, if you palliate their shortcomings you may be enabling their poor behavior. I think Samuel Johnson's quote below is a great example:
“Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliate the other's failings because they are his own.” -Samuel Johnson (source: http://thinkexist.com/quotation/friends_are_often_chosen_for_similitude_of/149442.html)
Palliate comes from the latin word for cloak, which is pallium. This is interesting to me because it is a neuroanatomical term. In the brain, the pallium is the evolutionary precursor to the cerebrum. In all animals with a brain, the pallium clokes the brain and provides the superior, most complex functions. In humans, the pallium evolved in the cerebrum and provided us with a place for spatial memory, language, and other functions.
Check this out, a blog that uses cartoons to expand your vocabulary:
