Abate: To decrease, or become less in strength or violence; as pain abates; a storm abates.
Once upon a time, this word meant, ”to put an end to, or to destroy”
Over time, abate came to represent something diminishing in power, or diminishing in strength.
Abate passed through French before arriving in English. The Old French word abattre meant, to beat down. At this point, abate starts to resemble the original Latin meaning. Abate comes from two Latin words. The prefix ad means, to, toward, near, or next to. Ad joined the Latin verb batto, battere, meaning, to pound, to beat, or to hit. When the preposition “ad” bumped into the “b” in “battere,” it assimilated. Adbattere became abbattere.
Took a long time for the word to become Abate, but, hey… it got there eventually.
In modern slang, to abate is to ignore what is necessary, while obsessing about what is meaningless.
Kinda like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN2WzQzxuoA
