Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Troubled with a feeling of compunction.
- Causing compunction; pricking the conscience; causing misgiving, regret, or remorse.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of the nature of compunction; caused by conscience; attended with, or causing, compunction.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Pertaining to
compunctions ,scruples , feelings ofguilt .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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It would be inuspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctious of me to disregard such praise, and thus I must. with tremiculous incumbulum thank you for your most kind contrafibularities.
Think Progress » Sen. Kit Bond Wants To Privatize Medicare With Vouchers 2010
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But your friend will have no such compunctious visitings.
Saint Ronan's Well 2008
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June was instantly compunctious; she ran to her aunt and kissed her.
The Man of Property 2004
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Michael sat, compunctious, watching him tick down a long page of entries.
The White Monkey 2004
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And from the nursery window Fleur would see him, departing at his glum and measured gait, with a compunctious relief.
Swan Song 2004
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She was very white, and she knew — for with her nerves thus sharpened she saw everything — that he was both uneasy and compunctious.
The Man of Property 2004
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Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him.
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Feeling her own consequence, before she could speak, she had learned the art of tormenting me, and if I ever dared to resist, I received blows, laid on with no compunctious hand, or was sent to bed dinnerless, as well as supperless.
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Considered in themselves, in their style and sentiment, the little digressions, the long conversations, the carefully wrought side-scenes are so rich in a certain tender religious wisdom, yet crisp and piquant withal, and so full of living thought on the great questions of the day, that we dwell in them with enjoyment, though with a compunctious half-consciousness that they ought not to be there.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 Various
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No compunctious visitings of conscience seem to have haunted her.
Notable Women of Olden Time Anonymous
bilby commented on the word compunctious
"Mother and daughter adored each other and revered their son and brother; and Archer loved them with a tenderness made compunctious and uncritical by the sense of their exaggerated admiration, and by his secret satisfaction in it."
- Edith Wharton, 'The Age of Innocence'.
September 19, 2009