extenuation :

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extenuation


  • n  a partial excuse to mitigate censure; an attempt to represent an offense as less serious than it appears by showing mitigating circumstances
  • n  to act in such a way as to cause an offense to seem less serious

  • It has always been noted in extenuation that literary satire thrives on vile bodies and that swinishness justifies a measure of pique.
  • Whatever financial profits it may yield and whatever may be said in extenuation of it as a diversion, it cannot escape severe censure as outright gambling on a large scale.
  • In their extenuation, it might be said that none of them knew that Soviet Russia's main military effort for the year, on the main highway to Berlin, would run its course in six .

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