- 1縱容；姑息
To condone something is to treat a wrong act as acceptable — to let it pass, forgive it, or fail to punish it, even though most people think it is morally wrong. “The school does not condone cheating” means they will not look the other way. You condone behaviour: violence, lying, bullying, corruption — not a missed bus.
It is a formal verb. You meet it in news, law, school rules, and other serious talk. Though actually, it sits close to “forgive,” but in real English you very often meet it in the negative: we cannot condone this, we do not condone that. That is the voice of a group drawing a line.
The Latin starting point is “to forgive,” built on “give” — as if you give the wrong away and do not hold it. In today’s English, though, condoning can sound less like warm forgiveness and more like failing to stand against the thing.
From the word’s history
From Latin condōnāre 'to forgive'.
借自拉丁文 condōnāre「原諒、寬恕」。
組成A learned borrowing from Latin condōnāre (“to forgive”), from con- + dōnāre (“to give”).
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
condoneverb/kənˈdoʊn/
- 1
To forgive, excuse or overlook (something that is considered morally wrong, offensive, or generally disliked).
- ‘Then the father has a great fight with his terrible conscience,’ said Munday with granite seriousness. ‘Should he make a row with the police[…]? Or should he say nothing about it and condone brutality for fear of appearing in the newspapers?
- 2
To allow, accept or permit (something that is considered morally wrong, offensive, or generally disliked).
- Rule-utilitarianism is unlikely to condone torturing a child, but it does imply that the torturing of a child is less evil if the torturer shares his pleasure with other sadists-perhaps by inviting an audience, or broadcasting it on the Internet.
- 3
lawTo forgive (marital infidelity or other marital offense).
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。