ABSOLVE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does absolve mean? 

• ABSOLVE (verb)
  The verb ABSOLVE has 2 senses:

1. grant remission of a sin to

2. let off the hook

  Familiarity information: ABSOLVE used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ABSOLVE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they absolve    ... he / she / it absolves   
Past simple: absolved   
Past participle: absolved   
-ing form: absolving   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Grant remission of a sin to

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

absolve; shrive

Context example:

The priest absolved him and told him to say ten Hail Marys

Hypernyms (to "absolve" is one way to...):

forgive (stop blaming or grant forgiveness)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

absolution (the act of absolving or remitting; formal redemption as pronounced by a priest in the sacrament of penance)

absolution (the condition of being formally forgiven by a priest in the sacrament of penance)

absolver (someone who grants absolution)

absolvitory (providing absolution)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Let off the hook

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

absolve; free

Context example:

I absolve you from this responsibility

Hypernyms (to "absolve" is one way to...):

forgive (stop blaming or grant forgiveness)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "absolve"):

excuse; exempt; let off; relieve (grant exemption or release to)

justify ((used of God) declare innocent; absolve from the penalty of sin)

wash one's hands (to absolve oneself of responsibility or future blame)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody of something

Antonym:

blame (put or pin the blame on)

Derivation:

absolvitory (providing absolution)

 Context examples 

“And yet,” said I, smiling, “I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records.”

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Nay, more, if you all agree, later, you are absolved from the promise.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

But, I believe the time has come when it would be mistaken faith and delicacy to conceal it any longer, and when your appeal absolves me from his injunction.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

‘I promised my friend that I would say nothing of the matter, and a promise is a promise,’ said she; ‘but if I can really help her when so serious a charge is laid against her, and when her own mouth, poor darling, is closed by illness, then I think I am absolved from my promise.’

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I lingered at the gates; I lingered on the lawn; I paced backwards and forwards on the pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for those trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart tremble, my veins glow when I viewed them.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Hopeless of the future, I wished but this—that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

"Well, Helen?" said I, putting my hand into hers: she chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went on—If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)