extenuate

Nothing can extenuate the horror of acts he spent his adult life trying to avoid.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2022

In my initial salvo, I pointed out that Yglesias had minimized the harm of copyright infringement with a rationale that could extenuate theft of any kind.

From Slate ● Feb. 2, 2012

Exceptionalism can be a dangerous faith because of how much it can extenuate and excuse.

From Time ● Feb. 4, 2010

No such circumstance could be brought forward to extenuate the revolting offense perpetrated two days later by the Hearst Evening Journal.

From Time Magazine Archive

The child has done wrong—I do not wish to extenuate her crime—for crime it is when you consider her mother's indulgence of every whim.

From The Passionate Elopement by Compton MacKenzie

“Prince is painfully removed from the youth culture in which he’s participating, which only extenuates the project’s problems,” it stated.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 18, 2015

It does not exactly prevent sin; it extenuates instead the painful consequences.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI by Robert Louis Stevenson

The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates and maligns it.

From Beyond Good and Evil by Helen Zimmern

His project is to center in himself, to direct and to subjugate human conscience, thanks to a doctrine that extenuates and encourages the most detestable passions.

From The Pocket Bible or Christian the Printer A Tale of the Sixteenth Century by Eug?ne Sue

But the pathetic anxiety of the face from which all memories of "Charley's Aunt" have utterly vanished is too much for his fortitude; and, at the risk of more semi-fibs, he extenuates the sentence.

From Somehow Good by William Frend De Morgan

Hooker’s problems have been particularly extenuated and traumatic, especially for a vaulter who had the skill and composure to set an Olympic record of 19-6½ at the 2008 Beijing Games.

From New York Times ● Aug. 8, 2012

This news extenuated the Earl's guilt in her eyes to a degree which permitted a slight emotion resembling pity to pervade her.

From The Streets of Ascalon Episodes in the Unfinished Career of Richard Quarren, Esqre. by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

We want not to see what Fuseli termed drapery "snapped instead of folded," faces bloated into apoplexy, or extenuated into skeletons; colour borrowed from the jars in a druggist's shop, and expression forced into caricature.

From Six Centuries of Painting by Randall Davies

His doings are all favorably regarded; and while his capacity is extolled, even his shortcomings are extenuated.

From The Martins Of Cro' Martin, Vol. I (of II) by Charles James Lever

One is extenuated and the other extended; one is invisible the other is visible.

From The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 by Aaron Walker

There were extenuating circumstances, however, such as the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the Whitecaps to split one season between sequesters in Canada and Portland, Ore., then start the next season quarantined in Utah.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 15, 2025

“The bottom line is: If consumers have jobs, barring extenuating circumstances, they will continue to spend money and pay their bills.”

From MarketWatch ● Dec. 11, 2025

Swansea University students can access a carers passport to help facilitate reasonable adjustments and extenuating circumstances.

From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2025

“The one thing I can tell you is that everyone that’s ever worked for me has always gotten paid. Obviously, the circumstances here are a little extenuating, but yes, everybody will be paid eventually.”

From Slate ● Apr. 18, 2024

“Isn’t it a pity that we didn’t meet under less extenuating circumstances?”

From "Nine Stories" by J. D. Salinger