pardon

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• transitive verb To release (a person) from punishment or disfavor for wrongdoing or a fault: synonym: forgive.
• transitive verb To allow (an offense or fault) to pass without punishment or disfavor.
• transitive verb To make courteous allowance for; excuse.
• noun The act of pardoning.
• noun Exemption of a convicted person from the penalties of an offense or crime by the power of the executor of the laws.
• noun An official document or warrant declaring such an exemption.
• noun Allowance or forgiveness for an offense or a discourtesy.
• noun Roman Catholic Church An indulgence.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To remit the penalty or punishment due on account of (an offense); pass by or leave without penalty, resentment, or blame; forgive; overlook.
• To absolve (an offender) from liability for an offense or crime committed; release (a person) from the punishment or penalty due on account of some fault or offense.
• To excuse; indulge; especially, to excuse from doing something.
• Synonyms Pardon, Forgive. These words are often synonymous. Strictly, pardon expresses the act of an official or a superior, remitting all or the remainder of the punishment that belongs to an offense: as, the queen or the governor pardons a convict before the expiration of his sentence. Forgive refers especially to the feelings; it means that one not only resolves to overlook the offense and reestablishes amicable relations with the offender, but gives up all ill feeling against him. See pardon, n.
• noun Forgiveness of an offender or of his offense or crime; a passing over without punishment; remission of penalty.
• noun In law, a free remission of the legal consequences of guilt or of some part of them; an act of grace proceeding from the power charged with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed from the punishment the law prescribes for a crime he has committed. Marshall.
• noun The deed or warrant by which such remission is declared.
• noun A papal indulgence, or remission of the temporal punishment due to sin, usually for a stated time.
• noun Allowance; excuse.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of pardoning; forgiveness, as of an offender, or of an offense; release from penalty; remission of punishment; absolution.
• noun An official warrant of remission of penalty.
• noun The state of being forgiven.
• noun (Law) A release, by a sovereign, or officer having jurisdiction, from the penalties of an offense, being distinguished from amnesty, which is a general obliteration and canceling of a particular line of past offenses.
• transitive verb To absolve from the consequences of a fault or the punishment of crime; to free from penalty; -- applied to the offender.
• transitive verb To remit the penalty of; to suffer to pass without punishment; to forgive; -- applied to offenses.
• transitive verb To refrain from exacting as a penalty.
• transitive verb obsolete To give leave (of departure) to.
• transitive verb forgive me; excuse me; -- a phrase used also to express courteous denial or contradiction, or to request forgiveness for a mild transgression, such as bumping a person while passing.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Forgiveness for an offence.
• noun law An order that releases a convicted criminal without further punishment, prevents future punishment, or (in some jurisdictions) removes an offence from a person's criminal record, as if it had never been committed.
• verb transitive To forgive.
• verb transitive, law To grant an official pardon for a crime; unguilt.
• interjection Often used when someone does not understand what another person says.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb accept an excuse for
• verb grant a pardon to
• noun the formal act of liberating someone
• noun the act of excusing a mistake or offense
• noun a warrant granting release from punishment for an offense