Word of the Day

: November 16, 2018

exculpate

verb EK-skull-payt

What It Means

: to clear from alleged fault or guilt

exculpate in Context

A false lead from an ancestry site is no different than eliminating suspects through regular detective work; except people are more easily exculpated." — Julie O'Connor, The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey), 13 May 2018

"But the longer and more often you misremember something, the truer it becomes. Misremembering a bad thing as less bad might liberate a survivor, but it also might exculpate a perpetrator." — Margaret Lyons, The New York Times, 26 May 2018

Did You Know?

You need not take the blame if you're unfamiliar with the origins of exculpate, and we would be glad to enlighten you, if that's the case. The word, which was adopted in the 17th century from Medieval Latin exculpatus, traces back to the Latin noun culpa, meaning "blame." Some other descendants of culpa in English include culpable ("meriting condemnation or blame") and inculpate ("incriminate"), as well as the considerably rarer culpatory ("accusing") and disculpate (a synonym of exculpate). You may also be familiar with the borrowed Latin phrase mea culpa, which translates directly as "through my fault" and is used in English to mean "a formal acknowledgment of personal fault or error."