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apologize

verbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//əˈpɒləˌd͡ʒaɪz//
  • United Kingdom//əˈpɔləˌd͡ʒɑjz//
  • United States//əˈpɑləˌd͡ʒaɪz//
  • Australia//əˈpɔləˌd͡ʒɑez//
  • Scotland//əˈpɔləˌd͡ʒaɪz//

To make an apology or excuse; to acknowledge some fault or offense, with expression of regret for it, by way of amends

verb

  1. 1

    To make an apology or excuse; to acknowledge some fault or offense, with expression of regret for it, by way of amends

    My correspondent apologized for not answering my letter.

    Barnes was commanded, with Garrett and Jerome, to make a public acknowledgment of his errors; and to apologize especially for his insolent language to Gardiner

    Today I want to apologize to my co-workers.

  2. 2

    To express regret that a certain event has occurred.

  3. 3

    datedTo make an apologia or defense; to act as apologist.

    To this purpose the most witty, cautious and subtile ſort of the Pagans apologize for themselves

Etymology

From apology + -ize, from ἀπολογία (apología, “a speech in defense”), from ἀπολογέομαι (apologéomai, “to speak in one’s defense”), from ἀπόλογος (apólogos, “an account, story”), compound of ἀπο- (apo-, “from, off”) and λόγος (lógos, “speech”); compare also ἀπολογίζομαι (apologízomai, “to render an account”).

Forms

past tense
apologized
past participle
apologized
present participle
apologizing
third person singular
apologizes
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).