Compassionate

How to spell compassionate

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce compassionate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does compassionate mean?

1. adjectiveShowing sympathetic concern for the suffering or misfortune of others.

Compassionate in a sentence

• The nurse was known for her compassionate care of frightened patients.

• The firm grants compassionate leave to staff who lose a close relative.

Where does compassionate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin compassio, which combined com- meaning 'with' or 'together' and pati, the verb 'to suffer', so the literal idea was 'to suffer alongside another person'. That Late Latin noun was a deliberate translation of a Greek term for shared feeling, and it carried the sense of being moved by someone else's pain. The adjective reached English in the late 1500s by way of medieval Latin and French, where compassion and its relatives were already common in religious writing. The same pati root that gives the doubled s in passion also sits inside 'patient', 'passive', and 'passion' itself, all of which share the original notion of undergoing or enduring something. Remembering that compassion is built on the noun 'passion' explains the tricky -ssion- spelling: it is com- plus passion plus -ate, not a single run of soft sounds.

How the word is built

• com- (with, together)
• passion (from Latin pati, passus: to suffer)
• -ate (adjective suffix)