Why Is "Mitigate Against" Usually Wrong?

"Mitigate against" is probably the single most common mistake attached to this word — and the fix doesn't change the meaning at all.

Mitigate is a direct transitive verb: it takes its object with no preposition. "Mitigate the risk of delay," not "mitigate against the risk of delay." Careful usage authorities, including Garner's Modern English Usage, flag "mitigate against" as nonstandard.

Why this construction is so persistent

It's attested in real writing by both native and non-native speakers, which is exactly why it's worth naming clearly rather than pretending it never appears. This profile doesn't teach it as flatly ungrammatical in every register or dialect — but it's never the taught default, never a model answer, and a careful professional writer avoids it. The fix is simple, and it doesn't touch the object: just drop "against."

Discouraged: *"These steps will mitigate against the risk of delay."

Preferred: "These steps will mitigate the risk of delay."

Preferred: "The new controls mitigate the risk of a data breach." (not "mitigate against the risk of a data breach")

Notice what stays the same across the discouraged and preferred versions: the subject, the verb, and the object. Only the unnecessary preposition disappears. That's a useful way to self-edit — if you catch yourself writing "mitigate against," don't reach for a different verb; just delete "against" and check the sentence still reads naturally.

A different mistake, worth keeping separate

This is a different mistake from confusing "mitigate" with "militate against," a genuinely different word with a genuinely different meaning. Here, the object and the intended meaning are correct from the start — only the extra preposition needs to go. Confusing mitigate with militate is a word-choice error; "mitigate against" is a form error that happens to use the right word with one word too many attached to it.

Why the error is so common in the first place

Part of the reason "mitigate against" spreads is analogy: plenty of common risk-related verbs really do take "against" naturally — guard against, protect against, insure against, safeguard against. A writer reaching for that family of phrasing pulls "against" along by habit, even though mitigate isn't a member of that group grammatically. Recognizing that mitigate is the outlier in that list, not the rule, is often enough to break the habit permanently.

Practice scenarios

Practice repairing mitigate against in situations like:

• editing a draft risk report that uses "mitigate against the risk of..."
• catching the error in a colleague's sentence without over-correcting the rest of it
• self-editing a sentence you've drafted before sending it

Useful practice phrases:

• "These steps mitigate the risk of..." (no "against")
• "The new controls mitigate the risk of..."
• "Drop 'against' — the object stays exactly the same."

"Mitigate against" reads as fluent. That's the trap.

A careful writer doesn't need a different word — just one fewer.

Lyra Practice helps advanced non-native English professionals learn the nuance of high-value workplace expressions and practice using them in realistic scenarios, so their English sounds natural, precise, and senior at work. Try Lyra Practice.