EXTENUATE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Extenuate

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/ɪkstˈɛnjuˌeɪt/ Listen

verb

Extenuate v. t. (past & past part. extenuated; pres. part. extenuating)

To make thin or slender; to draw out so as to lessen the thickness. "His body behind the head becomes broad, from whence it is again extenuated all the way to the tail."

To lessen; to palliate; to lessen or weaken the force of; to diminish the conception of, as crime, guilt, faults, ills, accusations, etc.; opposed to aggravate. "But fortune there extenuates the crime." "Let us extenuate, conceal, adorn the unpleasing reality."

To lower or degrade; to detract from. (Obs.) "Who can extenuate thee?"

Synonyms: To palliate; to mitigate. See Palliate.

Extenuate v. i. To become thinner; to make excuses; to advance palliating considerations.

adjective

Extenuate adj. Thin; slender. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Extenuate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Extenuate" Quotes from Famous Books

... predicted over and over again by the prophets as to happen. The natural consequence of this conviction in the minds of those nations, would be a revulsion of the feelings to the opposite extreme. They would exaggerate the merits, and extenuate the demerits of "God's servant." They would reflect with astonishment and commiseration on their past sufferings. "We considered them," they might exclaim, "as a God- abandoned race, and devoted to wretchedness by him for having ...

— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... hand again. "You are a worthy daughter of Athens. In years to come they will name you with King Codrus who sacrificed his life for the freedom of Attica, for have you not sacrificed what should be dearer than life,—the fair name of your husband? But courage. Your patriotism may extenuate his crime. Only the ...

— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... much more affecting when we read it in confessions wrung out by remorse from the greatly gifted, the gloriously endowed! But it is not his faults that are remembered here—assuredly not these we meet to honour. To deny error to be error, or to extenuate its blame, that makes the outrage upon sacred truth; but to forget that it exists, or if not wholly so, to think of it along with that under-current of melancholy emotion at all times accompanying ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... great deal of information on the Borgia family; P. Villari's Machiavelli (English translation, new ed., 1892) deals with the subject at some length. Of the Catholic writers L. Pastor, Geschichte der Papste (Freiburg i. B, 1886) should be consulted, for although the author tries to extenuate the pope to some extent, on the whole he ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... ground. Property was thus placed at the disposal of the men who already exercised absolute political power. "The state of France," said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed." It is in vain that the attempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties of this time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, or pleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by the foreigner, and rent with civil war. The more that is known of the Reign ...

— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

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