[f. as prec. + -ING2.] That extenuates in senses of the vb. Now chiefly in phrase Extenuating circumstances: circumstances that tend to diminish culpability.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1658), 525. A thin extenuating diet.
a. 1653. Gouge, Comm. Hebr. i. 2 (1655), 13. These words, at divers times and in sundry manners, are extenuating words.
1655. Culpepper, Riverius, II. i. 63. Let him use things extenuating, as Hysop, Fennel … and especially Nutmeg.
1679. J. Goodman, Penit. Pardoned, II. ii. (1713), 198. It was not an extenuating but a just reflection which the Historian makes upon … Alexander.
1694. R. Burthogge, Reason, 139. Its Emanation … is from a Center into an Orb or Sphere, in Extenuating Lines.
1750. trans. Leonardus’ Mirr. Stones, 98. But Galen holds, that it is warming and extenuating.
1840. Macaulay, Clive, 55. In Clive’s case, there were many extenuating circumstances.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), I. 494. Those … who have taken the life of another under the like extenuating circumstances.
Hence Extenuatingly adv., in an extenuating manner.
1884. Mrs. Houston, Caught in Snare, II. xv. 171. ‘Perhaps,’ said Helen, extenuatingly, ‘she suffers.’
