extenuate
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\n \n Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 22, 2024 is:\n \n
\n \n\n extenuate • \\ik-STEN-yuh-wayt\\ • verb
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Extenuate is a formal word that is most often used to mean \u201cto lessen the strength or effect of something, such as a risk.\u201d In legal use, to extenuate a crime, offense, etc., is to lessen or to try to lessen its seriousness or extent by making partial excuses.
\n\n// Developers are trying to extenuate the various risks associated with the product.
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\u201cOedipus, paragon of problem-solvers, discovers by the end of the play the limits of his own keen intellect. In trying to outrun his fate, he learns that he is part of a design that is larger than his understanding. But it is as a victim of fate that he finds the freedom to assume a courageous responsibility for deeds committed in ignorance. ... Nothing can extenuate the horror of acts he spent his adult life trying to avoid.\u201d \u2014 Charles McNulty, The Los Angeles Times, 12 Sept. 2022
\n \n \n\n Did you know?
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Extenuate is most familiar in the phrase \u201cextenuating circumstances,\u201d which refers to situations or facts that provide a partial justification or excuse for something. The word extenuate can, however, also be used all on its own. Its most typical use is with the meaning \u201cto lessen the strength or effect of something, such as a risk,\u201d but it also has legal use closely related to the meaning of \u201cextenuating circumstances\u201d; to extenuate a crime, offense, etc., is to lessen or to try to lessen its seriousness or extent by making partial excuses. Extenuate didn\u2019t get its start in this semantic territory, however. It was borrowed into English in the 1500s with a now-archaic meaning it took directly from its Latin forebear, extenuare: \u201cto make light of; to treat as unimportant.\u201d Extenuate is today mostly at home in technical and legal contexts, but it occasionally appears in general writing with what may be a developing meaning: \u201cto prolong, worsen, or exaggerate.\u201d This meaning, which is likely influenced by the words extend and accentuate, is not yet fully established.
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