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 did not try to extenuate my own weakness in writing from my mother's dictation; but I let her see what I had suffered then and what I had suffered since.

From Strange Stories by Grant Allen

“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

Policy may, however, outweigh strategy, and the circumstance that the victor only retains as the price of peace his conquests, or part of them, made in war, extenuates if it does not justify divergent operations.

From A Short History of the Great War by A. F. (Albert Frederick) Pollard

This act of disobedience differs from the others in one particular which, in the opinion of your Committee, rather aggravates than extenuates the offence.

From The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

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

A. Because it increases choler, which dries and extenuates the body.

From The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher Containing his Complete Masterpiece and Family Physician; his Experienced Midwife, his Book of Problems and his Remarks on Physiognomy by Aristotle

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

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

In this quarter the arms of China were not disgraced by any excesses, and moderation towards the unarmed population extenuated their severity towards armed foes.

From The Life of Yakoob Beg Athalik Ghazi, and Badaulet; Ameer of Kashgar by Demetrius Charles Boulger

So the Beverly Park incident, and all other incidents, if true to the last syllable of the defense testimony, merely in this case extenuated the motive on November 5th.

From The Everett massacre A history of the class struggle in the lumber industry by Walker C. Smith

It may be in part extenuated by the consideration that in these Psalms it is the community that speaks, and that the enemy of the good cause deserves less forbearance than the private adversary.

From History of Religion A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems by Allan Menzies

“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

When it happens for other people, because I know it does sometimes, there’s probably a lot of extenuating circumstances happening behind the scenes.

From New York Times ● Feb. 1, 2024

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

From "Nine Stories" by J. D. Salinger