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

In New York the instinct to "Garland" the monstrous -- to extenuate brutality and make a victim of the victimizer -- is more attenuated than in the Ivy League.

From Time Magazine Archive

I could add many more things, which would justify me in the eye of the world, were I less cautious than I am; but his failings would not extenuate any on my side.

From The Sylph, Volume I and II by Georgiana Cavendish

“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

In this reply Warburton extenuates, without justifying, the act of his friend, and is more successful in his attack upon Bolingbroke for exposing the treachery than in his defence of Pope for perpetrating it.

From The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 New Edition by Alexander Pope

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

From Beyond Good and Evil by Helen Zimmern

Perhaps one of the reasons for this ignorance is that Scotland Yard never defends itself, never explains, never extenuates.

From Scotland Yard The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police by George Dilnot

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

I have not extenuated his faults, to the best of my knowledge.

From A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield by John Charles Ryle

But I set it down as it happened, that all may come in its due place, nothing in this history being either altered or extenuated.

From The Men of the Moss-Hags Being a history of adventure taken from the papers of William Gordon of Earlstoun in Galloway by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

I have not extenuated this act, and I will not defend it.

From The International Spy Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War by Allen Upward

They have unwisely smoothed away so much and have extenuated so much in their halting and ambiguous phrases, as to create a picture of which the outlines are far too faint.

From William Hickling Prescott by Harry Thurston Peck

Medicare doesn’t cover you for emergency hospital care overseas, except in certain extenuating circumstances where a foreign hospital may be closer than a U.S. one.

From MarketWatch ● Feb. 13, 2026

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

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

He wanted to plead his friend’s case, explain the extenuating circumstances.

From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover