Definition of "palliate"

And if there are some bankers out there who are still embarrassed by the size of their bonuses, then I propose that they palliate their guilt by giving to the Mayor's Fund for London to help deprived children in London.

2009, Boris Johnson, The Evening Standard, 15 Jan 09

We extenuate not our guilt : whatever we sin , we condemn it as mortal : they palliate wickedness , with the fair pretence of veniality

April 5 1628, Bishop Joseph Hall, The Blessings, Sins, and Judgments of God's Vineyard

"Ah, dearest!" replied he, "your spirits are exhausted,—perhaps unconsciously oppressed with the idea of that future whose pain and whose peril I have rather heightened than palliated."

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXXVI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), page 300

If, mindless of palliating circumstances, we are bound to regard the death of the Master-at-arms as the prisoner's deed, then does that deed constitute a capital crime whereof the penalty is a mortal one?

1924, Herman Melville, chapter 18, in Billy Budd‎, London: Constable & Co.

Bradly stopped dead, too confounded to be appalled. Young Podson! Impossible! He had last seen young Podson, a bank clerk, on the seat of a pub verandah in an inland town ninety miles away, Bradly's last painting town. A noosance, young Podson, only to be palliated on a pub verandah after dinner.

1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, page 65

Brown's options for the machinery of Whitehall are constrained, as for all prime ministers, by the need to palliate allies and hug enemies close (John Reid, say).

2007 January 25, “Looking towards a Brown future”, in The Guardian

[the] most helpful method of its Cure, which yet if palliate and imperfect would onely make way to more fatal Sickness

1661, John Fell, The life of the most learned, reverend, and pious Dr. H. Hammond