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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

... will be less perfect. It is a portion of the duke's life which cannot be entirely passed over in silence, since it must be conceded, that much of his unpopularity may be traced to this source. Neither the court nor the people of England are so ascetic as not to extenuate the indiscretions of royalty; but this charitable estimate of misgivings does not extend to approbation of any culpable dereliction of social and moral duties. The fact of his royal highness having a large family, by a lady now no more, is too ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various

... it," Beppo remarked, to extenuate his outwitted cunning, when he found each door of the room fast ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... means, in the shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days compels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company and of its servants has been taken away, if in India the yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter than that of ...

— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the judicious and curious Reader to determine. Thus much I thought necessary to say concerning former Translations, in order to justify my own Undertaking, which will not acquire an intrinsic Merit from the Censures, that I have pass'd upon others. No: The Faults of others cannot extenuate our own; and that Stamp, which every Work carries along with it, can only determine of what Kind it ...

— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally

... poetic justice: "he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place." (Nichol Smith's "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," ...

— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

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