EXTENUATE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does extenuate mean? 

• EXTENUATE (verb)
  The verb EXTENUATE has 1 sense:

1. lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of

  Familiarity information: EXTENUATE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EXTENUATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they extenuate    ... he / she / it extenuates   
Past simple: extenuated   
Past participle: extenuated   
-ing form: extenuating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

extenuate; mitigate; palliate

Context example:

The circumstances extenuate the crime

Hypernyms (to "extenuate" is one way to...):

apologise; apologize; excuse; rationalise; rationalize (defend, explain, clear away, or make excuses for by reasoning)

Domain category:

jurisprudence; law (the collection of rules imposed by authority)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Derivation:

extenuation (to act in such a way as to cause an offense to seem less serious)

extenuation (a partial excuse to mitigate censure; an attempt to represent an offense as less serious than it appears by showing mitigating circumstances)

 Context examples 

“Those who are showing a preference for fresh red cells might consider discontinuing this practice unless there are extenuating circumstances.”

(Fresh red blood cell transfusions do not help critically ill children more than older cells, National Institutes of Health)

It would avail me nothing to extenuate it now.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He appeared, and confirmed the whole account: but with much more advantage to the captain, whose modesty had extenuated or concealed a great part of his merit.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Miss Bennet was the only creature who could suppose there might be any extenuating circumstances in the case, unknown to the society of Hertfordshire; her mild and steady candour always pleaded for allowances, and urged the possibility of mistakes—but by everybody else Mr. Darcy was condemned as the worst of men.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

In the several debates upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity; often urging the services you had done him, and endeavouring to extenuate your crimes.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

However, it is now some comfort to reflect, that in what I said of my countrymen, I extenuated their faults as much as I durst before so strict an examiner; and upon every article gave as favourable a turn as the matter would bear.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)