pardonable
They might pardonably ask what right we have to be there.
She spoke critically perhaps, but pardonably so.
His heart leaped at the shock and he exclaimed unprofessionally, but pardonably.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Making & accepting apologies
amends
apologetically
apologize
atone for something
atonement
beg
bury
bygone
conciliatory
crawl
crawl back (to someone)idiom
forge ahead
forgive
penance
resolve your differences
shred
sink your differencesidiom
solatium
sorry to bother you
soz

Examples of pardonably

pardonably
A moment later entered her father, his dark-red face pardonably gleaming like a moon through the haze at the charms of his only daughter.
From Project Gutenberg
It was close, she had been on her feet almost two hours, she was pardonably annoyed at this staring girl--and she showed it.
From Project Gutenberg
After a lingering--and pardonably pleased--look at herself in a long mirror, she descended, mounted and rode slowly down toward town.
From Project Gutenberg
Beset by the national vice of flowery embellishment, they were also pardonably ignorant of savage life, and had an indiscriminating thirst for the marvelous.
From Project Gutenberg
They have reached their first resting-place, and pardonably enjoy the opportunity of looking back at the road they have traversed.
From Project Gutenberg
Being pardonably proud of his eyes and his ability to move quietly, the boy was disgusted.
From Project Gutenberg
He had indeed erred, yet pardonably; for if any human spirit could have sufficiently reverenced the processes so sacred in his eyes, it must have been a woman's.
From Project Gutenberg
That was a solid spell of a rest, when he came to think of it, even allowing that he had been unusually and pardonably fatigued when conducted to his berth.
From Project Gutenberg
They resented the idea, chiefly because such action would cause a revival of the old scandal involving their sister, which they were pardonably anxious to have forgotten.
From Project Gutenberg
Pardonably proud of the strength which he had in part created, he loved to exhibit gymnastic feats, and to talk of the matches in which he had been stroke-oar.
From Project Gutenberg
It was hard it should be so, and he chafed against necessity, forgetting, as perhaps he pardonably might, that the need was the price he paid for wife and child.
From Project Gutenberg
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.