vindicate

Verb

1. To clear of an accusation, suspicion or criticism.
   • to vindicate someone's honor
   • As a man of vision, he understood this. Without Cerberus, humanity was doomed to an existence of groveling subservience at the feet of alien masters. Still, there were those who would call what he did criminal....

   Synonyms: absolve clear exonerate acquittance assoil assoilzie acquit disculp disculpate exculpate vindicate

2. To justify by providing evidence.
   • to vindicate a right, claim or title
   • The Ukrainians immediately demanded a goal and their claims were vindicated as replays showed the ball crossed the line before Terry's intervention. - 2012 June 19, Phil McNulty, “England 1-0 Ukraine”, in BBC Sport:
   • Also see: United National Congress, Trinidad and Tobago
3. To maintain or defend (a cause) against opposition.
   • to vindicate the rights of labor movement in developing countries
   • When Trump's election pulled back the curtain on the rise of the far-right in America, I'd naively assumed the Jewish left would be vindicated. - 2019, Eli Valley, “A Springtime of Erasure”, in Jewish Currents, number...
4. To be proven reasonable, correct, or justified.
5. To provide justification for.
   • The violent history of the suspect vindicated the use of force by the police.
6. To lay claim to; to assert a right to; to claim.
7. To liberate; to set free; to deliver.
8. To avenge; to punish.
   • a war to vindicate infidelity