Definition of excuse

"excuse" in the noun sense

1. excuse, alibi, exculpation, self-justification

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"

2. excuse

a note explaining an absence

"he had to get his mother to write an excuse for him"

3. apology, excuse

a poor example

"it was an apology for a meal"

"a poor excuse for an automobile"

"excuse" in the verb sense

1. excuse, pardon

accept an excuse for

"Please excuse my dirty hands"

2. excuse, relieve, let off, exempt

grant exemption or release to

"Please excuse me from this class"

3. excuse, explain

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"

4. apologize, apologise, excuse, rationalize, rationalise

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

"rationalize the child's seemingly crazy behavior"

"he rationalized his lack of success"

5. excuse, beg off

ask for permission to be released from an engagement

6. excuse, condone

excuse, overlook, or make allowances for be lenient with

"excuse someone's behavior"

"She condoned her husband's occasional infidelities"

Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)

Princeton University "About WordNet®."
WordNet®. Princeton University. 2010.


View WordNet® License

Quotations for excuse

Your play needs no excuse. [ William Shakespeare ]

No friendship can excuse a sin. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Find you without excuse,
And find a hare without a muse. [ Proverb ]

Mere idleness can have no excuse. [ Proverb ]

Beauty is its own excuse for being. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

An ill paymaster never wants excuse. [ Proverb ]

Better a bad excuse, than none at all. [ Camden ]

What could a woman's head contrive
Which it would not know how to excuse? [ Lessing ]

If eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being. [ Emerson ]

Oftentimes, excusing of a fault
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse;
As patches, set upon a little breach.
Discredit more in hiding of the fault,
Than did the fault before it was so patched. [ William Shakespeare ]

Tell them, dear, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being. [ Emerson ]

Take not His name, who made thy mouth, in vain;
It gets thee nothing, and hath no excuse. [ George Herbert ]

Wilful faults have no excuse, and deserve no pardon. [ Proverb ]

A wilful fault has no excuse, and deserves no pardon. [ Proverb ]

Bad men excuse their faults; good men will leave them. [ Ben Jonson ]

God is the brave man's hope and not the coward's excuse. [ Plutarch ]

Friendship and company are a bad excuse for ill actions. [ Proverb ]

Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent. [ Cicero ]

There are some passions so sweet that they excuse all the follies they provoke. [ Rochebrune ]

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded. [ Pope ]

Necessity, that great refuge and excuse for human frailty, breaks through all law. [ Pascal ]

I have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else. [ Franklin ]

There is no objection to plain women being Puritans ; it is the only excuse they have for being plain. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

Great men should think of opportunity and not of time. Time is the excuse of feeble and puzzled spirits. [ Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) ]

Most people who commit a sin count on some personal benefit to be derived therefrom, but profanity has not even this excuse. [ Hosea Ballou ]

Unsuccessful emulation is too apt to sink into envy, which of all sins has not even the excuse to offer of temporary gratification. [ Sydney Dobell ]

Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them. [ Shenstone ]

Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because it is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him. [ Selden ]

Necessity, that great refuge and excuse for human frailty, breaks through all law; and he is not to be accounted in fault whose crime is not the effect of choice, but force. [ Pascal ]

Woman has a smile for every joy, a tear for every sorrow, a consolation for every grief, an excuse for every fault, a prayer for every misfortune, and encouragement for every hope. [ Sainte-Foix ]

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking of the superiority of one sex to the other, as if they could be compared in similar things! Each has what the other has not; each completes the other; they are in nothing alike; and the happiness and perfection of both depend on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give. [ Ruskin ]

We readily excuse paralytics from labor; and shall we be angry with a hypochondriac for not being cheerful in company? Must we stigmatize such an unfortunate person as peevish, positive, and unfit for society? His disorder may no more suffer him to be merry, than the gout will suffer another to dance. The advising a melancholic to be cheerful is like bidding a coward to be courageous, or a dwarf be taller. [ Wollaston ]

Two things a master commits to his servant's care - the child and the child's clothes. It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master's return, Sir, here are all the child's clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost. Much so of the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little care and thought about it. [ John Flavel ]

excuse in Scrabble®

The word excuse is playable in Scrabble®, no blanks required.

Scrabble® Letter Score: 15

Highest Scoring Scrabble® Play In The Letters excuse:

EXCUSE
(69)
 

All Scrabble® Plays For The Word excuse

EXCUSE
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The 200 Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays For Words Using The Letters In excuse

EXCUSE
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excuse in Words With Friends™

The word excuse is playable in Words With Friends™, no blanks required.

Words With Friends™ Letter Score: 17

Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Play In The Letters excuse:

EXCUSE
(99)
 

All Words With Friends™ Plays For The Word excuse

EXCUSE
(99)
EXCUSE
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EXCUSE
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The 200 Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays Using The Letters In excuse

EXCUSE
(99)
EXECS
(93)
EXCUSE
(81)
EXCUSE
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EXECS
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EXCUSE
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Words within the letters of excuse

2 letter words in excuse (2 words)

3 letter words in excuse (6 words)

4 letter words in excuse (3 words)

5 letter words in excuse (1 word)

6 letter words in excuse (1 word)

excuse + 1 blank (3 words)

excuse + 2 blanks (3 words)

Words containing the sequence excuse

Words that start with excuse (6 words)

Words with excuse in them (5 words)

Words that end with excuse (1 word)

Word Growth involving excuse

Shorter words in excuse

ex

us use

Longer words containing excuse

excused unexcused

excuseless

excuser excusers

excuses

inexcuseable inexcuseableness

inexcuseably