excuse

1. 1.

   accept an excuse for

   “Please excuse my dirty hands”

   Synonymspardon

   Broaderforgive
2. 2.

   grant exemption or release to

   “Please excuse me from this class”

   Synonymsrelievelet offexempt

   Broaderabsolve

   Narrowerfrank
3. 3.

   serve as a reason or cause or justification of

   “Your need to sleep late does not excuse your late arrival at work”

   “Her recent divorce may explain her reluctance to date again”

   Synonymsexplain

   Broaderjustify

   Narroweralibi
4. 4.

   defend, explain, clear away, or make excuses for by reasoning

   “rationalize the child's seemingly crazy behavior”

   “he rationalized his lack of success”

   Synonymsapologizeapologiserationalizerationalise

   Broaderdefend

   Narrowercolorpleadextenuate
5. 5.

   ask for permission to be released from an engagement

   Synonymsbeg off

   Broaderrequest
6. 6.

   excuse, overlook, or make allowances for; be lenient with

   “excuse someone's behavior”

   “She condoned her husband's occasional infidelities”

   Synonymscondone

   Broaderforgive

1. 1.

   a defense of some offensive behavior or some failure to keep a promise etc.

   “he kept finding excuses to stay”

   “every day he had a new alibi for not getting a job”

   “his transparent self-justification was unacceptable”

   Synonymsalibiexculpationself-justification

   Broaderdefense

   Narrowerextenuation
2. 2.

   a note explaining an absence

   “he had to get his mother to write an excuse for him”

   Broadernote
3. 3.

   a poor example

   “it was an apology for a meal”

   “a poor excuse for an automobile”

   Synonymsapology

   Broaderexample

Other forms of excuse

plural

excuses·

past tense

excused·

present participle

excusing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about excuse

What does excuse mean?

excuse means "accept an excuse for". That is the primary sense; the word has 9 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in excuse?

excuse has 2 syllables: ex-cuse. The stress falls on "cuse". In IPA it is /ɪkˈskjus/.

What is another word for excuse?

Close synonyms include pardon, relieve, let off, exempt, explain. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is excuse a common word?

excuse is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.