Thesaurus results for RATIONALES

rationales

noun

plural of rationale

as in explanations

a statement given to explain a belief or act the rationale for starting the school day an hour later is that kids will supposedly get an extra hour of sleep

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of rationales The president has offered several rationales for the war in Iran, chief among them dismantling Tehran’s nuclear program. —

Lauren Green, The Washington Examiner, 19 June 2026 Cicero has been my nemesis in this book, for unconscionably grasping for elder power and offering up rationales for doing so repeated over the centuries. —

Literary Hub, 18 June 2026 Transparency mechanisms such as feature attribution logging and traceable alert rationales are becoming standard components in pharmacy AI platforms. —

Ethan Stone june 3, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 3 June 2026 Writers such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson published eloquent ecological and scientific rationales for wilderness preservation, wildlife management, and pollution control, laying the intellectual groundwork for the late 1960s and early ’70s boom in environmental legislation. —

John Reid, The Atlantic, 14 May 2026 The lawsuit also includes a lot of lengthy rationales that this is cultural appropriation of an Indigenous person that has nothing to do with the legality of Right of Publicity. —

Brian Welk, IndieWire, 8 May 2026 Freed from all the entanglements that come with having to launch a ground invasion, air war can overfly not just morality and law but arguments, rationales, the calibration of risks to rewards and of suffering to satisfaction. —

Fintan O’Toole, The New York Review of Books, 9 Apr. 2026 Investors look for reasons to take profits, even though the rationales may have nothing to do with the market action. —

Michael Hiltzik, Boston Herald, 3 Apr. 2026 Instead, the White House offered frequently shifting rationales for its war and little outreach to the Iranian resistance. —

Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, 3 Apr. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for rationales

Noun

There are plenty of explanations to choose from.

— Spencer Nusbaum, New York Times, 16 June 2026
The phenomenon remains debated, but researchers have investigated possible explanations involving electrical activity close to the Earth’s surface.

— Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 15 June 2026