Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Exonerate   /ɪgzˈɑnərˌeɪt/   Listen
Exonerate

verb
(past & past part. exonerated; pres. part. exonerating)
1.
Pronounce not guilty of criminal charges.  Synonyms: acquit, assoil, clear, discharge, exculpate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Exonerate" Quotes from Famous Books



... injuring Brown, bent its energies to saving Macdonald from the consequences of his reckless violence. The Liberal members asked for a complete exoneration of Mr. Brown. A supporter of the government was willing to exonerate Brown if Macdonald were allowed to escape without censure. A majority of the committee, however, took refuge in a rambling deliverance, which was sharply attacked in the legislature. Sir Allan MacNab bluntly declared that the charge had been completely ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... her duty was regarding reporting the leaders in the "racket," if they obstinately refrained from confessing their offense, she could not readily determine. She finally resolved that she would do her utmost to exonerate Jennie without ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... for some time that the partners were on the watch for the thief. He had heard them talking about the matter; but he supposed he had managed the case so well as to exonerate himself and implicate Harry, whom he hated ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... had time to have swung the lead and sang out the marks, before she was on the rocks! It is one of those unforeseen calamities that are inevitable and which can never be prevented by any human foresight. I for one, and I've no doubt every one else here agrees with me, entirely exonerate you ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... pretended not to understand: just barely dipped my colours, and kept my course. Oh, if I had dreamed that his distress was extreme—that he was on the point of foundering and going down! However, that doesn't exonerate me: I ought to have turned aside to find out. It was a case of criminal negligence. That he, poor man, probably never blamed me, only adds to the burden on my conscience. He had got past blaming people, I dare say, and doubtless ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... richly deserve what I received and it is fitting that I should die by the hand of the man I sought to ruin! The wound, however, was dealt me in a perfectly fair duel and with my latest breath I shall exonerate the Viscount from all blame in the matter as ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... he must promise (either with or without an oath) that he will preserve them inviolate before "the brethren" will intrust them to him. The possibility of dissolving his connection with the association afterward does not exonerate him of promising to do he knows not what—of laying aside his own conscience and reason, and yielding himself "passively" to others. The promise of secrecy and of obedience to unknown regulations and ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher

... execution of the law and the maintenance of order, the judges, prosecuting attorneys, sheriff and drawers of jurors, and every other of court of law are in the hands of a despotic cabal who excessively tax, and whose courts convict all those who oppose them, and exonerate by trial the most farcical, the vilest criminal, rob and murder in broad day light, often at the bidding of their protectors. Such a status for a people claiming to be civilized seems difficult to conceive, yet the above was not an hypothesis ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... was electric with the force she should have spent in making nerves for the child. She knew that she was trying to kill the thing to which she had been ordered to give life; that the murder was being committed by a part of her which was beyond the control of her will did not exonerate her. In these matters, as she had learned in the moment when she had discovered that her baby had conceived without the consent of her soul, the soul cannot with honour disown the doings of the body. The ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... expediency—the reputation of Rome had been tarnished—it would have been better, even if Parthamasiris were guilty, to have let him escape, than to have punished him at the cost of a public scandal. So strongly was the disgrace felt that some (it seems) endeavored to exonerate Trajan from the responsibility of having contrived the deed, and to throw the blame of it on Exedares, the ex-king of Armenia and brother of Parthamasiris. But Trajan had not sunk so low as to shift his fault on another. He declared openly that the act was ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... among many others that spoke against the Fabii, the priests called fecials were the most decided, who, on the religious ground, urged the senate that they should lay the whole guilt and penalty of the fact upon him that committed it, and so exonerate the rest. These fecials Numa Pompilius, the mildest and justest of kings, constituted guardians of peace, and the judges and determiners of all causes by which war may justifiably be made. The senate referring the whole matter to the people, and the priests there, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... have him sent to jail. If she discovers that he is getting the affection and the sex life which she has denied him, outside of his home, and if she buys a revolver and murders him in cold blood, the jury will exonerate her. ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias

... during the present year, have rendered the speedy and successful result of the long-established policy of the Government upon the subject of Indian affairs entirely certain. The occasion is therefore deemed a proper one to place this policy in such a point of view as will exonerate the Government of the United States from the undeserved reproach which has been cast upon it through several successive Administrations. That a mixed occupancy of the same territory by the white and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... Romanist sense of the term) without previous communication with me—or indeed that you should take upon yourself to originate any measure of importance without authority from the heads of the Church—and therefore I at once exonerate you from the accusation brought against you by the newspaper I have quoted, but I feel it nevertheless a duty to my Diocese and myself, as well as to you, to ask you to put it in my power to contradict ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... achieved its end in spite of their resolute and complete detachment, collapsed and vanished from his mind. He admitted to himself that driven by a kind of instinctive necessity he had led their conversation step by step to a realization and declaration of love, and that it did not exonerate him in the least that Miss Grammont had been quite ready and willing to help him and meet him half way. She wanted love as a woman does, more than a man does, and he had steadily presented himself as a man free to love, able to love ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... this time with a touch of command in my voice. "This is a serious matter, and I intend to deal with it as it deserves. You once said that if you knew anything which might serve to exonerate Eleanore Leavenworth from the suspicion under which she stands, you would be ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... is eager to know the reasons why they did or failed to do a thing, instead of satisfying one's curiosity they go quietly away and say nothing. Women in the same position itch to justify, to excuse, to exonerate. Men keep silent and let one think what one pleases—a form of moral cowardice which remains at once their weakness ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... any committee of gentlemen to exonerate me," Dave answered coolly. "You acted the rowdy, Ripley, and you'd show more sense if you ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... kajero. Exhale odori. Exhaust konsumi. Exhaustion konsumiteco. Exhibit elmontri. Exhibition ekspozicio. Exhort admoni. Exhume elterigi. Exigence postulo—eco. Exigent postula. Exile ekzili. Exist ekzisti. Existence ekzistajxo. Exit eliro. Exonerate pravigi. Exorbitant supermezura. Exotic alilanda. Expanse etendeco. Expand etendi. Expect atendi. Expectation atendo. Expectorate kracxi. Expedite ekspedi. Expedition (milit.) militiro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... quite off from the subjects of your admonitions, not attempting to support them, nor yet willing to exonerate me from charges. ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... condemned, and scanning the poor wretch's face, presently recognized him for Gisippus, and marvelled how he should come to be there, and in such a woeful plight. And most ardently desiring to succour him, nor seeing other way to save his life except to exonerate him by accusing himself, he straightway stepped forward, and said with a loud voice:—"Marcus Varro, call back the poor man on whom thou hast passed sentence, for he is innocent. 'Tis enough that I have incurred the wrath of the Gods by ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... a risk in attending. He recognized that. But he was moved by an imperative urge to find out all that was possible of the affair. The force that drove him was the need in his heart to exonerate his friend. Though he recognized the weight of evidence against her, he could not believe her guilty. Under tremendous provocation it might be in character for her to have shot his uncle in self-defense or while in extreme anger. But all his knowledge of her ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... than a cup of tea. And in this very struggle, the women of the Southern States have cut up their carpets for blankets, have borne the most humiliating retrenchments and privations of all kinds without a murmur. So let us exonerate the female sex of want of patriotism, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a board to investigate and report upon the disaster. But it accomplished nothing other than to convince me that there were several officers upon it who were in full sympathy with Johnson, for, though no charges had been preferred against him, the board went out of its way specifically to exonerate him in ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... is sometimes given to those suspected of crime in order to put them to proof. Because we read in the Decretals: "It often happens that thefts are perpetrated in monasteries of monks; wherefore we command that when the brethren have to exonerate themselves of such acts, that the abbot shall celebrate Mass, or someone else deputed by him, in the presence of the community; and so, when the Mass is over, all shall communicate under these words: 'May the body of Christ prove thee today.'" And further ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... philosopher, it cut him that the high-spirited girl had condemned him. He felt himself in a false position from which he could not easily extricate himself. The worst of it was that if it came to a showdown he could not expect the simple truth to exonerate him. ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... received various other sums, contrary to the express prohibition of the said act, and his own declared sense of the evident intent and obligation thereof.—That in the month of June, 1780, the said Warren Hastings made to the Council what he called "a very unusual tender, by offering to exonerate the Company from the expense of a particular measure, and to take it upon himself; declaring that he had already deposited two lacs of rupees [or twenty-three thousand pounds] in the hands of the ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... it is. After the accident—I think I was partly blamed for that—he behaved very well; told everybody about the slippery ground and said what he could to exonerate me." ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... and perplexity to depart without revisiting home. He added full and well-expressed thanks for all that Mr. Fellowes had done for him, and for kindness for which he hoped to be the better all his life. He enclosed a long letter to his father, which he said would, he hoped, entirely exonerate his kind and much-respected tutor from any remissness or any participation in the scheme which he had thought it better on all accounts ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... accident to Mr. Huskisson, such a series of mortifying disappointments and the Duke of Wellington's experience at Manchester had been so very far removed from gratifying that the directors of the company felt moved to exonerate themselves from the load of censure by an official explanation. This they did ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... thou put me not to further speech, Know that I Camicion de' Pazzi was, And wait Carlino to exonerate me." ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... he uttered, when the faggots were piled around him, would seem to exonerate him from such a charge: "My God, whom I have so often offended, be merciful to me; and I beseech you, O Virgin Mother, and you, divine Stephen, to intercede with God for me a sinner." The Parliament of Paris condemned ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... say that your sympathies are enlisted on his behalf. The jury were inclined to exonerate the signalman, weren't they? What has the company ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... to give and take flattery to any amount What a stock of axioms young people have handy When Love is hurt, it is self-love that requires the opiate Wrapped in the comfort of his cowardice You accuse or you exonerate—Nobody can ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger

... knowledge of a girl under thirteen is a misdemeanour. Her consent makes no difference, and even the solicitation of the act on the part of the child will not exonerate the accused. ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... 29. Nothing in these rules shall exonerate any vessel or the owner or master or crew thereof from the consequences of any neglect to carry lights or signals, or of any neglect to keep a proper lookout, or of the neglect of any precaution which may be required by the ordinary practice of seamen or by the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... pleasures its expenditure bestows. They know too well the pain of want of money, but have never learned that the real pleasure of its possession consists in its employment.[66] It is only from habit, only from perverted experience, that they are avaricious, therefore I at once exonerate them from the charges I have brought against those whose very nature it is to love money for its own sake. At the same time the strong expressions I have made use of respecting these latter, may, I hope, serve to obviate the suspicion ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... her! If I could go to her and tell her all, and exonerate myself! If I could show her that he was mine always,—mine long before she ever saw him,—then she would not think so harshly of me. I know not what explanation Maurice gave her, nor how much of our conversation she overheard; and I cannot live contentedly,—oh! I cannot die in peace till I ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... another word which in the figurative sense has quite extinguished the literal. We still speak of 'polished' surfaces; but not any more, with Cudworth, of "polite bodies, as looking glasses". Neither do we now 'exonerate' a ship (Burton); nor 'stigmatize', at least otherwise than figuratively, a 'malefactor' (the same); nor 'corroborate' our health (Sir ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... this city with the fleet and troops which he had there, in the month of April of the year 98. The said Don Francisco Tello and the said Doctor Morga, seeing the great error which they had committed, attempted to exonerate themselves before the said Don Joan Rronquillo should arrive in this city. They arrested him, charging him with having taken away the protection of the said island of Mindanao, without their having sent him any strict order which would ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... prove to be in some cases the practical solution, but it is not now the point in discussion, for no one will deny that such delicate distinctions are both inconvenient and dangerous, and should only be adopted if forced upon us. I shall assume that common sense and universal experience exonerate me from wasting words on the proof that homophones are mischievous, and I will give my one example in a note[8]; but it is a fit place for ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... her. I began to think too that some dreadful mistake had been made. Her manner seemed too ingenuous for guilt. Yet where could that ruby be, if not with this young girl? Certainly, all other possibilities had been exhausted, and her story of the bill, even if accepted, would never quite exonerate her from secret suspicion while that elusive ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green

... Desolate Impugn Efflorescent Arbor vitae Consider Constellation Disaster Suburb Address Dirigible Dirge Indirectly Desperate Inoperative Benevolent Voluntary Offend Enumerate Dilapidate Request Exquisite Exonerate Approximate Insinuate Resurgence Insurrection Rapture Exasperate Complacent Dimension Commensurate Preclude Cloister Turnpike Travesty Atone Incarnate Charnal Etiquette Rejuvenate Eradicate Quiet Requiem Acquiesce Ambidextrous Inoculate ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... which he was arrested. It is unconscionable that Khalid should misappropriate Party funds. Indeed, he never even touched or saw any of it, excepting, of course, that check which he returned. But the Boss was still in power. And what could Shakib do to exonerate his friend? He did much, and he tells as much about it. With check-boot in his pocket, he makes his way through aldermen, placemen, henchmen, and other questionable political species of humanity, up to the Seat of Justice—but such detail, though of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... render easy &c adj.; facilitate, smooth, ease; popularize; lighten, lighten the labor; free, clear; disencumber, disembarrass, disentangle, disengage; deobstruct^, unclog, extricate, unravel; untie the knot, cut the knot; disburden, unload, exonerate, emancipate, free from, deoppilate^; humor &c (aid) 707; lubricate &c 332; relieve &c 834. leave a hole to creep out of, leave a loophole, leave the matter open; give the reins to, give full play, give full swing; make way for; open the door to, open the way, prepare the ground, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... quite worth while. He may have been so great That satraps would have shivered at his frown, And all he prized alive may rule a state No larger than a grave that holds a clown; He may have been a master of his fate, And of his atoms,—ready as another In his emergence to exonerate His father and his mother; He may have been a captain of a host, Self-eloquent and ripe for prodigies, Doomed here to swell by dangerous degrees, And then give up the ghost. Nahum's great grasshoppers were such as these, Sun-scattered ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... sensible, too, that the very operation of a plan of economy which tends to exonerate the civil list of expensive establishments may in some sort defeat the capital end we have in view,—the independence of Parliament; and that, in removing the public and ostensible means of influence, we may increase the fund of private corruption. I have thought of some ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... there should be no dissolution, which would throw the country into a ferment, lead to violent manifestations and declarations, and to many people being obliged to pledge themselves to measures of a dangerous tendency. He wishes, therefore, to place Peel in such a situation as shall exonerate him from the necessity of a dissolution, by giving him a fair general though independent support; but the power to do this depends much upon the temper that is displayed, and upon the mode in which the change is effected; for if ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... of such men as Mr. Walter, of the Times. After an hour and thirty-five minutes of delay the verdict was a compromise: "We are unanimously of opinion that the book in question is calculated to deprave public morals, but at the same time we entirely exonerate the defendants from any corrupt motive in publishing it." The Lord Chief Justice looked troubled, and said that he should have to translate the verdict into one of guilty, and on that some of the jury turned to leave the box, it having been ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... will be something better than assistant judge; he will have M. Camusot's post within the year. The public prosecutor will be here to-day. M. Sauvager will be obliged to resign, I expect, after his conduct in this affair. At the court my husband will show you documents which completely exonerate the Count and prove that the forgery was a trap ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... that if she would please God, she must avoid the sin of Saul. Saul had spared the Amalekites, and God had turned his face from him. God had greater enemies in England than the Amalekites. Historians have affected to exonerate Pole from the crime of the Marian persecution; although, without the legate's sanction, not a bishop in England could have raised a finger, not a bishop's court could have been opened {p.223} to try a single heretic. If not with Pole, with ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... 'I thought it right to answer his letter, as I could exonerate the missionaries from any charge of having attempted to prejudice us against the Roman Catholic priests, nor did I believe that they would make use of any unfair argument against their faith, founded on the ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... that something did not exist. More than this, is it true that what Trumbull did can have any effect on what Douglas did? Suppose Trumbull had been in the plot with these other men, would that let Douglas out of it? Would it exonerate Douglas that Trumbull did n't then perceive he was in the plot? He also asks the question: Why did n't Trumbull propose to amend the bill, if he thought it needed any amendment? Why, I believe that ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... the imperfect code of human justice under which we live, Mr. Parr," he cried. "This is not a case in which a court of law may exonerate you, it is between you and your God. But I have taken the trouble to find out, from unquestioned sources, the truth about the Consolidated Tractions Company—I shall not go into the details at length—they are doubtless familiar to you. I know that the legal ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of the ancient Locrians, a Greek people settled in Lower Italy, and who flourished in 700th century B.C.; had a supreme respect for law, and was severe in the enforcement of it; punished adultery with the forfeiture of sight; refused to exonerate his own son who had been guilty of the offence, but submitted to the loss of one of his own eyes instead of exacting the full penalty of the culprit; had established a law forbidding any one to enter the Senate-house armed; did so himself on one occasion in a sudden ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... foster the pride of an old man to plunge into a relation of dubious doings of his youth. And yet, as I look backward on that one bit of smuggling of which I was guilty, so far as motive was involved, I exonerate myself. I looked on the government, because of the South's conquest by the North, and that later ruin of myself through the machinations of the Revenue office, as both a political and a personal foe. And I felt, not alone morally free, but was impelled besides in what I deemed a spirit ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... upbraidings and grief of all present, upon those articles in which every one was remembered for good, so often interrupted me, that the reading took up above six hours. But curses upon the accursed man were a refuge to which they often resorted to exonerate themselves. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... there I own we—my brother and I—were guilty of an act of injustice. I can only exonerate us on the plea of want of thought. Our father's widow was a young woman—younger than either of us. The child was but a baby. The widow's death seemed a very far off contingency. We placed the money we had agreed to allow her the interest on, in the hands of our solicitor. We absolutely ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... assume deep mourning if calamity came in consequence thereof. A few appropriate words of compliment addressed mainly to himself for his care in having the ship, when she sailed, in a state of unimpeachable order, and his constant intercession for divine protection were quite sufficient to exonerate him from in any way contributing either to loss of life or to loss of property. What cant, what insufferable hypocrisy! What hideous slaughter was committed in those good old times in God's name and in the name of British humanity! The late Dr Parker, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... of October Jones made a statement to Assistant District Attorney Osborne which was in large part false, and in which he endeavored to exonerate himself entirely from complicity in any of the crimes, and in which he charged the actual administration of the chloroform to Patrick. Four days later Osborne sent for him and told him he had lied, upon which Jones became confused, continued to persist in some of his statements, qualified ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train



Words linked to "Exonerate" :   purge, whitewash, assoil, discharge, label, judge, exonerative, convict, evaluate, pass judgment, vindicate, exoneration, pronounce



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org