What's the difference between excuse and explain?

Excuse


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To free from accusation, or the imputation of fault or blame; to clear from guilt; to release from a charge; to justify by extenuating a fault; to exculpate; to absolve; to acquit.
  • (v. t.) To pardon, as a fault; to forgive entirely, or to admit to be little censurable, and to overlook; as, we excuse irregular conduct, when extraordinary circumstances appear to justify it.
  • (v. t.) To regard with indulgence; to view leniently or to overlook; to pardon.
  • (v. t.) To free from an impending obligation or duty; hence, to disengage; to dispense with; to release by favor; also, to remit by favor; not to exact; as, to excuse a forfeiture.
  • (v. t.) To relieve of an imputation by apology or defense; to make apology for as not seriously evil; to ask pardon or indulgence for.
  • (v. t.) The act of excusing, apologizing, exculpating, pardoning, releasing, and the like; acquittal; release; absolution; justification; extenuation.
  • (v. t.) That which is offered as a reason for being excused; a plea offered in extenuation of a fault or irregular deportment; apology; as, an excuse for neglect of duty; excuses for delay of payment.
  • (v. t.) That which excuses; that which extenuates or justifies a fault.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As he told us: 'Individual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves.'
  • (2) We need to stop making excuses for them: But it is up to the state to close the loopholes Yes, the state must work continually to tighten and simplify the tax regime, which is a deliberate mess keeping an entire industry of accounting firms and tax lawyers fed.
  • (3) "With hindsight," he writes, "it was a trumped-up excuse for radical activism for its own sake."
  • (4) The Frenchman has been excused from duty at Everton on Saturday on compassionate grounds and the club have put no time frame on his possible return.
  • (5) Becton’s lawyer, Hannah Stroud, told a separate news conference that stress was no excuse for Casebolt’s actions and “the manner in which Ms Becton was treated was excessive, inappropriate and without cause” and a civil rights violation.
  • (6) Well, Machado put those skills on display on Sunday, and this is an excuse to bring you his ridiculous play against the Yankees.
  • (7) This prompted an angry response from the bill's sponsors who accused opponents of using border security as an excuse to block any immigration reform.
  • (8) This lovely coastal route also gives you an excuse to hop on the Skye ferry, which plies its way over the narrows to Kylerhea from the start of this walk.
  • (9) I think the French manager told him ‘it’s very difficult to watch you when you’re not playing for PSG’ – he hasn’t got that excuse now.” Palace are also well worth watching.
  • (10) I'm not a believer, and my only problem with artistic licence is when the phrase is used as an excuse to oversimplify a work to improve its marketability.
  • (11) Nothing in this context can be soft-pedalled and excused.
  • (12) He continues: “And a ‘no excuses’ culture where excellence is the norm.” Police were called by a member of the public shortly after 11am after reports of a disturbance outside the school in George V Avenue, where a number of parents and pupils had gathered.
  • (13) The current IRS controversy does not excuse sham political organizations masquerading as social welfare organizations, and shines a light on the critical need for campaign spending disclosure legislation.
  • (14) David Winnick, the MP for Walsall North, said: "None of [May's] excuses can explain away the sheer incompetence and shambles that have occurred on her watch."
  • (15) Sessions are scheduled regularly throughout the year and take place outside the hospital; interns are excused from their service responsibilities for the duration of the meeting.
  • (16) "There is no excuse to cut back on services that patients depend on.
  • (17) His team had been working on a protest-themed game for the past two years, and the frenzy surrounding Occupy Central gave them an excuse to release a prototype.
  • (18) After years of on-and-off e-dating, in which I've met 150-200 women, fallen in love with one and invented extravagant excuses to extricate myself from awkward encounters with countless others, you might think I'd be tired of it all.
  • (19) "We are always followed by a crowd of people – not journalists, but people who are following us and track our every move, and look for any excuse to detain us."
  • (20) The bar on religious weddings was meant to reassure the faithful, but the Church of England has twisted the weird and novel distinction between religious and secular marriages into an excuse to oppose the whole reform , while it is left to Labour's Yvette Cooper to speak for liberal Jews and Quakers who resent the continuing bar on them offering ceremonial equality.

Explain


Definition:

  • (a.) To flatten; to spread out; to unfold; to expand.
  • (a.) To make plain, manifest, or intelligible; to clear of obscurity; to expound; to unfold and illustrate the meaning of; as, to explain a chapter of the Bible.
  • (v. i.) To give an explanation.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) However, as other patients who lived at the periphery of the Valserine valley do not appear to be related to any patients living in the valley, and because there has been considerable immigration into the valley, a number of hypotheses to explain the distribution of the disease in the region remain possible.
  • (2) This effect was more marked in breast cancer patients which may explain our earlier finding that women with upper body fat localization are at increased risk for developing breast cancer.
  • (3) These results could be explained by altered tissue blood flow and a decreased metabolic capacity of the liver in obese subjects.
  • (4) These two types of transfer functions are appropriate to explain the transition to anaerobic metabolism (anaerobic threshold), with a hyperbolic transfer characteristic representing a graded transition; and a sigmoid transfer characteristic representing an abrupt transition.
  • (5) Blood pressure control was marginally improved during the study and it is thought possible that better patient compliance might explain this.
  • (6) They are best explained by interactions between central sympathetic activity, brainstem control of respiration and vasomotor activity, reflexes arising from around and within the respiratory tract, and the matching of ventilation to perfusion in the lungs.
  • (7) Muscle wasting in MYD may be explained by these abnormalities as well.
  • (8) She was not aware that it was an assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents.” If at least one of the women thought the killing was part of an elaborate prank, it might explain the “LOL” message emblazoned in large letters one of the killers t-shirts.
  • (9) Regression analysis on the 21 clinical or laboratory parameters studied showed that the only variable independently associated with CSF-FN was the total protein concentration in the CSF; this, however, explained only 14% of the observed variation in the CSF-FN concentration and did not show any correlation with CNS involvement.
  • (10) The approach was to determine the relative importance of predisposing, enabling, and medical need factors in explaining utilization rates among younger and older enrollees of an HMO.
  • (11) The results may help to explain the diversity in the multidrug-resistant phenotype.
  • (12) An efficient numerical algorithm based on the cyclic coordinate search method to solve the latter is explained.
  • (13) The reduction of such potentials can be explained in terms of collision between the antidromic volleys and those elicited orthodromically by chemical and thermic stimulation.
  • (14) Relative to the perceived severity of their asthma, both Maoris and Pacific Islanders lost more time from work or school and used hospital services more than European asthmatics using A & E. The increased use of A & E by Maori and Pacific Island asthmatics seemed not attributable to the intrinsic severity of their asthma and was better explained by ethnic, socioeconomic and sociocultural factors.
  • (15) Inhibition of local thrombin formation by warfarin therapy could explain the beneficial effects of warfarin therapy in treating small cell carcinoma of the lung.
  • (16) The American Red Cross said the aid organisation had already run out of medical supplies, with spokesman Eric Porterfield explaining that the small amount of medical equipment and medical supplies available in Haiti had been distributed.
  • (17) This system may serve as a model to explain the mechanisms by which cells accumulate in inflamed joints.
  • (18) These results might help to explain why only a minority of individuals with a susceptible HLA type develop uveitis, as well as the variable incidence of disease in HLA-identical populations of different ethnic backgrounds.
  • (19) The possibility that selective bias or unmeasured environmental differences might explain the difference in BP between the two groups is discussed.
  • (20) The total amount of variance explained in the frequency of utilization (47%) exceeded that explained by other studies of utilization of various health services by the elderly.