Merciful
adjectiveShowing compassion or forgiveness, especially toward someone one has power over.
How to spell merciful
8 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce merciful
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does merciful mean?
- adjectiveShowing compassion or forgiveness, especially toward someone one has power over.
Merciful in a sentence
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The judge was merciful and reduced the young man's sentence.
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A merciful landlord gave the struggling tenants extra time to pay.
Where does merciful come from?
Language of origin: French
The word merciful joins the noun mercy with the native English suffix -ful, meaning 'full of'. Mercy itself arrived in English in the 1100s from Old French merci, which traced back to the Latin merces, a word that literally meant 'wages', 'reward', or 'price'. In the Latin of the early Church, merces shifted from the idea of payment to the idea of a heavenly reward, and from there to the notion of pity or compassion freely shown rather than earned. English took up that compassionate sense, and by the 1300s writers were attaching -ful to form merciful, describing someone full of mercy. The spelling trap lies in the suffix: although it means 'full', the ending is written with a single l, so merciful keeps only one l where many writers are tempted to double it.
How the word is built
- merci- (mercy, from Latin merces: wages, reward)
- -ful (full of)
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