the.com/excuse

means A reason you give — often after the fact — to be let off the hook for something you did or didn't do.

from From Latin excusare, 'to free from blame,' built from ex- ('out, away') and causa ('cause, charge, legal case'). The root sense is almost courtroom-literal: to argue someone out of a formal accusation. It passed through Old French escuser on its way into English, picking up the everyday sense of wriggling out of a smaller charge — being late, forgetting a birthday — rather than a legal one.