attenuate vs extenuate
Definitions
adjective
- reduced in strength
verb
- weaken the consistency of (a chemical substance)
- become weaker, in strength, value, or magnitude
Examples
Some research suggests, however, that the effects of aging are attenuated not by how much people receive from their community but by how much they contribute to it.
Clinicians should refer cocaine-exposed children to early intervention services to attenuate long-term effects.
We're living through a deeply contradictory time when black folks (and what's left of the unions) are the Dems only truly reliable voting block, and yet every other manifesto for Democratic revitalization is some kind of attenuated, okie-doke Souljah-moment retread.
Definitions
verb
- lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of
Examples
Nor is he the victim of injustice or ingratitude that might extenuate, though not excuse, his later crimes.
It is true the people at the Cascades had suffered much, and that their wives and children had been murdered before their eyes, but to wreak vengeance on Spencer's unoffending family, who had walked into their settlement under the protection of a friendly alliance, was an unparalleled outrage which nothing can justify or extenuate.
Within months came the 'excuse' of nine-eleven which has been the single means to 'justify' such extenuated ends that must surely be the wetdreams of any Texas oilman since 1950.
