Excuse

‘Excuse’ may be either a noun or a verb. In either case the word is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, but when the word is used as a noun, the ‘s’ is unvoiced - i.e. pronounced as an ‘s’ IPA: / ɪk 'skj uːs/, and when it is used as a verb, the ‘s’ is voiced - pronounced as a ‘z’ IPA: / ɪk 'skj uːz/.

An excuse is an explanation for an action which shows, or seeks to show, that the agent (i.e., the person responsible for the action) does not deserve blame (or some other form of criticism) for having done it. So when someone has, e.g., made a mistake, done wrong, or behaved badly (i.e., acted in a way which would seem to be blameworthy), an excuse may serve to free them from blame or to reduce the degree of their blameworthiness. For example, an employee who failed to follow the correct procedure in dealing with some matter at work might offer the excuse that no one had explained to him what the correct procedure was; or a schoolboy’s excuse for not having done his homework might be that he had been unwell. Clearly not everything which is offered as an excuse will be acceptable, i.e., will actually excuse: the employee cannot excuse his failure to follow the correct procedure by claiming that he finds the correct procedure boring; and the schoolboy cannot excuse his not having done his homework by saying that he did not wish to miss his favourite television programme.

Excuses may therefore be distinguished, on the one hand, from apologies and, on the other, from justifications. In offering an apology for an action, I accept that what I did was wrong and that I have no excuse (i.e., deserve blame), but express sorrow or regret for what I have done. In offering an excuse, I accept that what I did was wrong, but hold that I am not blameworthy. In offering a justification for an action, I deny that what I did was wrong, insisting that though it may seem, or be thought by others, to be wrong, it was in fact right. Of course, although these distinctions are clear in principle, in practice it is not always easy to tell whether what is being offered is an apology or an excuse or, in other circumstances, an excuse or a justification; and this probably goes some way to explaining why in everyday English ‘excuse’, both as a noun and as a verb, is used rather more loosely than is implied by the account in the previous paragraph.