Other forms: exceptions
An exception is the one case a rule does not cover. Every shop on the street shuts on Sunday, with one exception, the bakery on the corner.
With the exception of and without exception are the phrases you will use most, as in everyone came, without exception. In programming, an exception is an error a program raises when something goes wrong, such as a missing file or a division by zero, so that other code can catch it and decide what to do; you will meet throw, catch and handle an exception. To take exception to something is to object to it, and it is stronger and stiffer than to mind. The adjective exceptional runs two ways, meaning unusual in exceptional circumstances and unusually good in an exceptional student. The exception that proves the rule is the old phrase people reach for when the odd case somehow makes the pattern clearer.
1nounruleA person or thing that a rule does not apply to.~83%
“Everybody has to queue, and there are no exceptions for staff.”
2nounexceptionIn programming, an error signalled by a program so that other code can deal with it.~17%
“The function throws an exception if the file is missing.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 23 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
exception is a case outside a rule.
Exception is the everyday word except with the ending -ion bolted on. It reached Middle English through Anglo-Norman excepcioun and Old French excepcion, from Latin exceptio. It has meant the same thing the whole way down: the item left out when you count the rest.
Latin
exceptiō
Anglo-Norman
excepcioun
Middle English
exception
English, today
exception
From Middle English exception, from Anglo-Norman excepcioun, from excepcion, from Latin exceptiō. From Middle English exception, excepcioun, from Anglo-Norman excepcioun, from Old French excepcion, from Latin exceptiō. Equivalent to except + ion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA