Serving to alleviate, reduce, or lessen pain, suffering, hardship, or difficulty.
From alleviate plus the adjectival suffix -ive (tending to, serving to). Similar formation to adjectives like creative or active.
Medical terminology distinguishes between 'curative' (fixes the problem) and 'alleviative' (reduces the problem)—this split reveals medicine's honest limit: sometimes we can only make things bearable, not broken.
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