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Simplify vs Extenuate - What's the difference?

simplify | extenuate |

In lang=en terms the difference between simplify and extenuate

is that simplify is to make simpler, either by reducing in complexity, reducing to component parts, or making easier to understand while extenuate is to lessen; to palliate; to lessen or weaken the force of; to diminish the conception of, as crime, guilt, faults, ills, accusations, etc; opposed to aggravate.

As verbs the difference between simplify and extenuate

is that simplify is to make simpler, either by reducing in complexity, reducing to component parts, or making easier to understand while extenuate is to make thin or slender; to draw out so as to lessen the thickness.

simplify

English

Verb

(en-verb)
  • To make simpler, either by reducing in complexity, reducing to component parts, or making easier to understand.
  • To become simpler.
  • * 2006 , Karen Oslund, “Reading Backwards: Language Politics and Cultural Identity in Nineteenth-Century Scandinavia”, in David L. Hoyt and Karen Oslund (editors), The Study of Language and the Politics of Community in Global Context , Lexington Books, ISBN 978-0-7391-0955-7, page 126:
  • Thus, throughout the nineteenth century, linguists generally held that more grammatically complex languages were older and that languages tended to simplify over time—the four grammatical cases of German as contrasted with the seven of Latin, for example.

    Derived terms

    * oversimplify * simplification * simplifier English ergative verbs

    extenuate

    English

    Verb

    (en-verb)
  • To make thin or slender; to draw out so as to lessen the thickness.
  • * Grew
  • His body behind the head becomes broad, from whence it is again extenuated all the way to the tail.
  • * Charlotte Brontë, Shirley
  • To this extenuated spectre, perhaps, a crumb is not thrown once a year, but when ahungered and athirst to famine—when all humanity has forgotten the dying tenant of a decaying house—Divine Mercy remembers the mourner
  • To become thinner.
  • To lessen; to palliate; to lessen or weaken the force of; to diminish the conception of, as crime, guilt, faults, ills, accusations, etc.; opposed to aggravate.
  • * 1599 ,
  • CLAUDIO. I know what you would say: if I have known her,
    You'll say she did embrace me as a husband,
    And so extenuate the 'forehand sin: No, Leonato,
    I never tempted her with word too large;
    But, as a brother to his sister, show'd
    Bashful sincerity and comely love.
  • * I. Taylor
  • Let us extenuate , conceal, adorn the unpleasing reality.
  • (obsolete) To lower or degrade; to detract from.
  • * Milton
  • Who can extenuate thee?