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Regulate vs Mediate - What's the difference?

regulate | mediate |

As verbs the difference between regulate and mediate

is that regulate is to dictate policy while mediate is to resolve differences, or to bring about a settlement, between conflicting parties.

As an adjective mediate is

acting through a mediating agency.

regulate

English

Verb

(regulat)
  • To dictate policy.
  • To control or direct according to rule, principle, or law.
  • * Macaulay
  • the laws which regulate the successions of the seasons
  • * Bancroft
  • The herdsmen near the frontier adjudicated their own disputes, and regulated their own police.
  • To adjust to a particular specification or requirement: regulate temperature.
  • To adjust (a mechanism) for accurate and proper functioning.
  • to regulate a watch, i.e. adjust its rate of running so that it will keep approximately standard time
    to regulate the temperature of a room, the pressure of steam, the speed of a machine, etc.
  • To put or maintain in order.
  • to regulate the disordered state of a nation or its finances
    to regulate one's eating habits

    Derived terms

    * deregulate * downregulate * upregulate

    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