Word.ws English Dictionary

past exonerative

past exonerative noun: the notional past tense of non-apology apologies like "mistakes were made", in which a speaker uses the passive voice (and past tense) and careful wording to avoid imputing intent or blame for a failure.

Noun

past exonerative

  1. The notional past tense of non-apology apologies like "mistakes were made", in which a speaker uses the passive voice (and past tense) and careful wording to avoid imputing intent or blame for a failure.
    • When deniability is impossible, dissociation is the way, and the past exonerative allows the actor to separate himself from the act.1991, The New York Times Magazine
    • The President expressed himself in what might be called the past exonerative, a verb tense politicians use when they're in trouble.1997, National Journal

Origin of past exonerative

Coined by political scientist William Schneider.

Questions about past exonerative

What does past exonerative mean?
Past exonerative means the notional past tense of non-apology apologies like "mistakes were made", in which a speaker uses the passive voice (and past tense) and careful wording to avoid imputing intent or blame for a failure.
What part of speech is past exonerative?
Past exonerative is a noun.

Words near past exonerative in the dictionary

  1. past active participle
  2. past active participles
  3. past anterior
  4. past continuous
  5. past due
  6. past exonerative
  7. past historic
  8. past historic tense
  9. past imperfect
  10. past imperfect tense
  11. past it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: past exonerative (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.

Last updated:

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