Word.ws English Dictionary

excuss

excuss verb: to shake off.

Verb

excuss (third-person singular simple present excusses, present participle excussing, simple past and past participle excussed)

  1. (obsolete) To shake off.
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To examine (a document).
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To decipher.
  4. (transitive) To seize and detain by law.
  5. To proceed against a principal debtor where there are either joint debtors or debtors and sureties.
    • The surety claimed relief in terms of the beneficium excussionis, thus obliging the creditor to excuss against the principal debtor.

Forms of excuss

third-person singular presentexcusses
present participleexcussing
past participleexcussed
pastexcussed

Origin of excuss

Borrowed from Latin excussus, past participle of excutere (“to shake off”).

Questions about excuss

What does excuss mean?
Excuss means to shake off.
What part of speech is excuss?
Excuss is a verb.
What is the past tense of excuss?
The past tense of excuss is excussed.

Words near excuss in the dictionary

  1. excusing my French
  2. excusingly
  3. excusings
  4. excusion
  5. excusive
  6. excuss
  7. excussed
  8. excusses
  9. excussing
  10. excussion
  11. excussions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: excuss (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “excuss.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/excuss. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.