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To act in such a way as to cause an offense to seem less serious
Answer for the clue "To act in such a way as to cause an offense to seem less serious ", 10 letters:
palliation
Alternative clues for the word palliation
Word definitions for palliation in dictionaries
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Palliation \Pal`li*a"tion\, n. [Cf. F. palliation.] The act of palliating, or state of being palliated; extenuation; excuse; as, the palliation of faults, offenses, vices. Mitigation; alleviation, as of a disease. --Bacon. That which cloaks or covers; disguise; ...
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. The alleviation of a disease's symptoms without a cure; temporary relief.
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
n. easing the severity of a pain or a disease without removing the cause to act in such a way as to cause an offense to seem less serious [syn: extenuation , mitigation ]
Usage examples of palliation.
Carruthers, who suggests, by way of palliation, that Pope was desirous at the time of providing for Martha Blount, and probably took the sum in order to buy an annuity for her.
The consoling power of this aesthetic palliation did the listener good, and went far to account for the special love he bore this number of his programme.
Secondly, even if a writer is destined always to be a failure, and even if he is never going to sell, he remains a human being for whom all the difficulties and frustration of a writer life exist and, in fact, exist without the palliation of even an occasional and minor triumph.
There was falsity in the exaggerated descriptions of his victories, and falsity again in the suppression or palliation of his reverses and losses.
I said, in palliation of this dark fact, that I had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a great wrong, and that he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he was so straitened in means.
Elgar, who had repeated this so often to himself, by way of palliation, that he had come to think it true.
In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best of palliations and silence the sovereign specific.
In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best of palliations and silence the sovereign specific.
Arguments, expedients, palliations, evasions, all seemed to be slipping away from him: he was left face to face with the mere graceless fact of his inferiority.