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Immediate vs Mediate - What's the difference?

immediate | mediate |

As adjectives the difference between immediate and mediate

is that immediate is happening right away, instantly, with no delay while mediate is acting through a mediating agency.

As a verb mediate is

to resolve differences, or to bring about a settlement, between conflicting parties.

immediate

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Happening right away, instantly, with no delay.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Assemble we immediate council.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
  • , chapter=19 citation , passage=When Timothy and Julia hurried up the staircase to the bedroom floor, where a considerable commotion was taking place, Tim took Barry Leach with him. He had him gripped firmly by the arm, since he felt it was not safe to let him loose, and he had no immediate idea what to do with him.}}
  • Very close; direct or adjacent.
  • * Shakespeare
  • You are the most immediate to our throne.
  • Manifestly true; requiring no argument.
  • embedded as part of the instruction itself, rather than stored elsewhere (such as a register or memory location)
  • Derived terms

    * immediately

    Anagrams

    * ----

    mediate

    English

    Verb

    (mediat)
  • To resolve differences, or to bring about a settlement, between conflicting parties.
  • To intervene between conflicting parties in order to resolve differences or bring about a settlement.
  • To divide into two equal parts.
  • (Holder)
  • To act as an intermediary causal or communicative agent; convey
  • Adjective

  • Acting through a mediating agency.
  • * (Oliver Sacks)
  • Vygotsky saw the development of language and mental powers as neither learned, in the ordinary way, nor emerging epigenetically, but as being social and mediate in nature, as arising from the interaction of adult and child, and as internalizing the cultural instrument of language for the processes of thought.
  • Intermediate between extremes.
  • (Prior)
  • Gained or effected by a medium or condition.
  • (Francis Bacon)
  • * Sir W. Hamilton
  • An act of mediate knowledge is complex.

    Derived terms

    * mediately