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View synonyms for explain away

explain away

verb

  1. tr, adverb to offer excuses or reasons for (bad conduct, mistakes, etc)
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Idioms and Phrases

Dismiss or minimize the importance of something, especially something detrimental. For example, “His words were taken down, and though he tried to explain them away, he was sent to the Tower” (Thomas Macaulay, The History of England , 1855). [c. 1700]
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Example Sentences

Obama already has had to explain away comments linking the Islamic State to a junior varsity team.

So Eugene already had a leg up—an interlocutor could explain away any failed communication.

First, the Texas governor will have to explain away the manifold gaffes and failures from his last presidential campaign.

Some court watchers believe Arias had no choice but to roll the dice with the jury and attempt to explain away her lies.

At some point, you have to have enough confidence in yourself as a pol to explain away a few votes.

The adherents of the old theology made strenuous efforts to explain away this unwelcome circumstance.

I have endeavoured to explain away the strange orthography, and I have conjecturally supplied the last line.

First, the Eleate states the opinion which perplexes him, and which he is anxious either to refute or to explain away.

Christians like Dr. Abbott explain away the Resurrection as no physical fact, but a spiritual conception.

Holland, in trying to explain away the inconsistencies of this fabrication, repeatedly blunders.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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