Compassion

How to spell compassion

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce compassion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does compassion mean?

1. nounSympathetic concern for the suffering of others, together with a wish to help.

Compassion in a sentence

• The nurse treated every patient with patience and compassion.

• The charity was founded out of compassion for families left homeless by the floods.

Where does compassion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Compassion comes from the Late Latin compassio, a noun built on the verb compati, which literally meant 'to suffer with' or 'to feel together'. That verb joined com- meaning 'with' or 'together' to pati meaning 'to suffer or endure', so the original idea was sharing in another person's pain. The word reached English in the 1300s through Old French compassion, carrying the same sense of fellow feeling for someone in distress. The same Latin pati gives us 'patient', 'passion', and 'passive', all of which trace back to the notion of enduring or undergoing something. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the single -s- of the root pass is doubled to -ss- before the -ion ending, producing the soft 'sh' sound that masks where one part stops and the next begins.

How the word is built

• com- (with, together)
• pass (from Latin pati: to suffer)
• -ion (noun suffix)