1) Dubious defense 2) Evasion of responsibility 3) Exclusively Saxon word 4) Failure 5) Lame excuse 6) Poor excuse 7) Pretext 8) Renege 9) Reneging 10) Shirker''s excuse 11) Weak excuse 12) Word of purely Anglo origin 13) Word with Anglo-Saxon origins 
[n] - a failure to face some difficulty squarely
noun a failure to face some difficulty squarely