Since "make up" means to fabricate something, I thought saying "make up excuses" would be more common than "make excuses." But Google Books showed me the opposite.
made up excuses (4,580)
made excuses (113,000)
Why is this?
Example sentence:
In elementary school, I always made (up) excuses to skip swimming
class.
Best Answer
Make up X doesn't mean just to fabricate something, but can mean to fabricate something really quickly or "on the spot." Plain make means to fabricate something without that additional implication.
Since in many situations there's only so many valid excuses to use, and using an existing excuse is easier, perhaps that explains why made excuses is more common than made up excuses.
For example, the typical excuses you'd use to not go to work would be "I'm sick", "a family member passed away", or "personal issues". Making up an excuse would be creating something totally new or different than those.