making excuses
Crafting convenient explanations
Making excuses is offering reasons—often weak or self-serving—to justify a failure or avoid responsibility.
The phrase usually implies the reasons aren't fully legitimate: Stop making excuses and just get it done.
Someone making excuses deflects blame rather than accepting fault or taking action.
- justifyingProving to be reasonable
- blamingAssigning responsibility for wrongdoing
- passing the buckTransferring responsibility to others
- deflectingTurning from original path
- rationalizingInventing acceptable explanations afterward
cop-out · dodging · alibis · explaining · shirking · avoiding · denying · in denial · defensive · weaseling · backpedaling · sorry · fault · responsibility · reasons · white lies · lying · covering
- annoying behaviorsnagging, pestering, bothering, irritating, aggravating
- bad habitssmoking, drinking, lying, swearing, gossiping
- Excusingjustifying, forgiving, pardoning, condoning, rationalizing
- fixed mindsetinflexibility, rigidity, stubbornness, closed-mindedness, stagnation
- cowardicecoward, cowardly, craven, gutless, spineless
- stallingstall, stalling, delay, hesitate, procrastinate
making excusestaking responsibility
owning up · admitting fault · facing the music · manning up · eating crow
making excusestaking action
Initiating purposeful effort
following through · putting in the work · making amends · rising to the occasion · stepping up
make, makes, maker, makers, making, remake, remade, unmade, excuse