Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being merciful; tenderness toward the faults or needs of others; readiness to forgive offense or relieve suffering.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state of being merciful; mercy.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the feeling that motivates compassion
  • noun leniency and compassion shown toward offenders by a person or agency charged with administering justice
  • noun a disposition to be kind and forgiving

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The designation Good Samaritan has become so associated with the idea of mercifulness, that I doubt not there are many persons who have the impression that Samaritans in the ancient Hebrew days were people specially noted for their benevolent disposition.

    The Essentials of Spirituality Felix Adler 1892

  • Despite its putative uncanonicity, it is only due to the "mercifulness" of the other Patriarchates that it barely enjoys communion at all.

    orrologion 2009

  • He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness.

    Autumn Thomas Plastino Martin 2010

  • September 28, 2008 at 1:29 pm mercifulness, dis LOLcat haz it! nawt bery common u noes…

    wen i conquar werld - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger? 2008

  • Lord Grey had lost his temper: but Raleigh kept his, and answered quietly — “Her majesty shall at least not find me among the number of those who prefer her favor to her safety, and abuse to their own profit that over-tenderness and mercifulness of heart which is the only blemish (and yet, rather like a mole on a fair cheek, but a new beauty) in her manifold perfections.”

    Westward Ho! 2007

  • The healer had just finished his training, but in the confusion never said that all important, closing protective prayer and it seemed the devil himself somehow transmitted this mercifulness skin condition onto Spider ten fold.

    Archive 2007-07-01 Linda 2007

  • The healer had just finished his training, but in the confusion never said that all important, closing protective prayer and it seemed the devil himself somehow transmitted this mercifulness skin condition onto Spider ten fold.

    The Healer - short story Linda 2007

  • To have entered into that atmosphere would have defeated my purpose, which was to show a great and genuine progress in Christendom in these few later generations toward mercifulness — a wide and general relaxing of the grip of the law.

    Mark Twain: A Biography 2003

  • Then they began to cry up parties again: the Diabolonians cried Up old Incredulity, Forget-Good, the new aldermen, and their great one Diabolus; and the other party, they as fast cried up Shaddai, the captains, his laws, their mercifulness, and applauded their conditions and ways.

    The Holy War 2001

  • In the great competition of the confessional groups for the adherence of men which ensued, Calvinism tried to impress by the sternness of its moral code, the extremity of its disciplinary com - mands, while Catholicism strove to attract by the mercifulness of its methods, by its willingness to build golden bridges for the repentant sinner and keep the

    CASUISTRY WERNER STARK 1968

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