exception
Pluralexceptions
- 1A person, thing, or case that is excluded or treated as distinct, not included in a general rule or statement.
Nearly every mammal gives birth to live young; the platypus is a famous exception.
With a few exceptions, the new policy applies to all employees.
Similaroutlier
Note
Here the exception is the thing left out, and it counts easily: one major exception, a few exceptions. Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow (2012) uses it for the clause that kept slavery lawful as punishment for a crime. Outlier stresses distance from the rest, while exception implies a rule that fails to reach it. The opposite is generality, the case the rule does cover.
- 2The act of excluding or leaving out something that would otherwise be included in a class, statement, or rule.
The ban applies to all imported produce, with the exception of dried fruit.
Safety rules on the site are enforced without exception, regardless of seniority.
Similarexclusion, exemption, omission
Oppositeinclusion
Note
The action noun of except, built as except + -ion and carried into Middle English through Anglo-Norman excepcioun and Old French from Latin exceptiō. As an act, it now lives mostly in fixed frames: with the exception of, without exception, make an exception. Keep it apart from the excluded case itself: an exception here is something you do, not something you point to.
- 3An objection or expression of dissent; a feeling of offense, or something that causes offense.
Several board members took exception to the chairman's dismissive tone.
Many readers took exception to the columnist's portrayal of small towns.
Similaroffense, umbrage, objection, issue
Note
Offense rather than formal objection, and nearly always followed by to or against: one takes exception to a remark, a tone, a claim. Take exception to is the working idiom today, and against belongs to older usage. It sits close to the courtroom objection, but here nothing is entered on a record. Someone has simply been displeased and says so.
- 4An event, usually an error, that disrupts a program's normal flow and can be signaled ("thrown") in one part of the code and dealt with ("caught") in another.
The function throws an exception when it receives a negative input.
Unhandled exceptions caused the server to restart several times overnight.
Note
Programmers give the noun verbs of its own: code throws or raises an exception, and a handler catches it. Once one is raised, the runtime unwinds the call stack until a matching handler is found. If none is, the program terminates. Specific kinds are named by compounding, as in null pointer exception, and an unhandled exception is a common reason a program crashes.
- 5An objection raised on legal grounds; also, in conveyancing, a clause by which the grantor reserves or excludes something before transferring the right.
Defense counsel took exception to the court's ruling on the disputed testimony.
The deed contained an exception reserving mineral rights to the original owner.
Similarobjection, reservation
Note
Courtroom practice once had counsel enter an exception on the record to preserve a ruling for appeal, a formality modern procedural rules have largely abolished. In conveyancing it names a clause in a deed by which the grantor withholds some existing part of the estate. Lawyers distinguish it from a reservation, which creates a new right rather than holding back one already there.
Practice
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Origin
This word came through Middle English and Old French from the Latin 'exceptiō'. It is equivalent to 'except' plus the suffix '-ion'.