English Explanatory Dictionary

past exonerative

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The notional past tense of non-apology apologies like "mistakes were made", in which a speaker uses the passive voice (and past tense) and careful wording to avoid imputing intent or blame for a failure.

Word forms

past exonerative

Etymology

Coined by political scientist William Schneider.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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