If you assuage an unpleasant feeling that someone has, you make them feel it less strongly. To assuage his wife's grief, he took her on a tour of Europe
If you assuage a need or desire for something, you satisfy it. The meat they'd managed to procure assuaged their hunger. to make an unpleasant feeling less painful or severe = relieve (assouagier, from assuaviare, from ad- + suavis )
To soften, in a figurative sense; to allay, mitigate, ease, or lessen, as heat, pain, or grief; to appease or pacify, as passion or tumult; to satisfy, as appetite or desire