Synonyms for compassion
Most common
All synonyms
Noun
1. Kindness
kindness, sympathy, mercy, loving-kindness, humanity, tenderness, commiseration, kindliness, grace, sorrow, heart, fellow feeling, clemency, condolence, pardon, tender-heartedness, benevolence, lenity, benignity, remorse dated, ruth dated, bowels dated
Other
Definitions
- n. 1
Deep awareness of the suffering of others that people have to the point of them being motivated to relieve such states.
Related words
- Word family
- compassionable compassionate compassionless compatible
- Is a kind of
- sadness
Forms
- Plural
- compassions → kindnesses, sympathies, mercies, loving-kindnesses…
Choose the right word
Compassion, like pity, is exercised only with respect to the suffering or unfortunate, but combines with the tenderness of pity the dignity of sympathy and the active quality of mercy.
J. C. Fernald, English Synonyms and Antonyms (1914)
Example sentences
- mercy And so God took mercy on her, and gave her a girl.
- sympathy His helplessness appeals to her motherly sympathy.
- kindness Kyoko had the kindness to carry my baggage for me.
- pity It was a pity that Tom couldn't come to our party.
- empathy Young children ought to learn empathy for animals.
By length
- 4 letters
- ruth1, pity2
- 5 letters
- heart1, grace1, mercy2
- 6 letters
- pardon2, sorrow2, bowels2, lenity
- 7 letters
- empathy3, remorse2
- 8 letters
- humanity4, kindness2, sympathy3, clemency3
- 9 letters
- benignity
- 10 letters
- tenderness3, condolence3, kindliness
- 11 letters
- benevolence4
- 13 letters
- commiseration
The small number after each word is its number of syllables (pity2 = 2 syllables).
In other languages
- Français
- compassion
- Italiano
- compassione
- Español
- compasión
- Deutsch
- Mitgefühl