Excepting

Part of speech: preposition

Pronunciation: /ɪkˈsɛptɪŋ/

Definitions

1. Excluding certain individuals or items from a broader statement
2. Making allowances for specific instances while generally adhering to a rule
3. Leaving out particular people or things from a general expression ; permitting a special case that does not follow the usual rule

Etymology: "Excepting" is the present participle of "except", but it has settled into use as a preposition meaning "with the exception of". The verb it comes from was borrowed into English from Middle French "excepter", which itself descends from the Latin "excipere", meaning "to take out" or "to take from", built from "ex-" ("out") and "capere" ("to take"). The core idea is simply taking one item out of a group, and that physical sense of lifting something out is still visible in the word's grammar of separation. The participle form has a tidy progression of its own. Because "except" can introduce an excluded item, the -ing form came to function as a single-word preposition, so a sentence like "everyone came, excepting the host" treats the phrase as one unit of exclusion. Readers may recognise the same pattern in "barring" and "notwithstanding", which also moved from verb forms into prepositions that mark what is left out.

Synonyms: excluding, omitting, leaving out, dismissing, not counting

Antonyms: including, counting, considering, embracing, incorporating