(n.) A picking of heart; poignant grief proceeding from a sense of guilt or consciousness of causing pain; the sting of conscience.
Example Sentences:
(1) This is especially the case when it is confronted with regimes such as those of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin that feel no compunction over a scorched-earth response to insurgency and do so with calculation.
(2) So ends in tragedy our three-year struggle.” Didn’t she have compunctions about publishing this intimate material?
(3) Isis, which has a growing operation in Afghanistan and little compunction about slaughtering civilians, are obvious suspects.
(4) Adult fighters who have shown no compunction abducting children from playgrounds, and throwing them into the frontline, will not shy from inviting such attacks.
(5) By all accounts he is a ruthless killer who has shown little compunction when it came to the on-screen murders.
(6) If they want to achieve global dominance in any particular industry, they take direct aim at foreign competitors and have little compunction about systematically weakening them.
(7) Wes Brown's past may be bound up with Manchester United but the Sunderland centre-back had no compunction about playing a key role in denying his former club a place in the League Cup final .
(8) He said it could “hardly be Islamic to kill without compunction Shia, Yazidi, Turkmen, Kurds, Christians and Sunni who don’t share this death cult’s view of the world” and nothing could “justify the beheadings, crucifixions, mass executions, ethnic cleansing, rape and sexual slavery”.
(9) In times past, great educators have spoken without compunction about the virtues of discrimination – not the loaded modern use of the word bespeaking one-upmanship and prejudice, but discrimination as a discipline of the intellect and character.
(10) I did have compunctions until various publications and articles appeared that have got the story so wrong that I felt that before I pop my clogs I had better get the story straight.” Gabrielle was distressed, for instance, that she was quoted in one report saying her brother died a virgin.
(11) The sale of a poison is regarded as a mere act of commercial intercourse; tant pis for the unfortunate victim of error or passion; he has the benefit of a coroner's inquest; the vendor of the poison receives a reprimand, and things resume their natural course--that is, arsenic and oxalic acid are retailed without compunction, and men are hurried from time to time into eternity.
(12) As food banks proliferate, policymakers' compunction to address the root causes of poverty and hardship diminish.
(13) But the rabid anti-smoking lobby has never been satisfied with merely protecting the health of non-smokers, and appears to have lost any compunction to defend further curtailments of smoking with legitimate medical research.
(14) Dimon – and JP Morgan – have shown a lot of compunction.
(15) You have no compunction in immediately excluding coal, the product of a rival industry, from this endeavour.
(16) The regrettable reality is that to mount the kind of attacks which Isil in Syria and in Iraq has in mind for Australia, all you need is a determined individual who will kill without compunction, a knife, an iPhone, and a victim,” Abbott told the Seven Network as part of a Friday morning media blitz.
(17) Refreshingly, Steve McClaren’s successor had no compunction about leaving the best part of £45m on his bench either in the shape of Wijnaldum, Jonjo Shelvey, Aleksandar Mitrovic and Henri Saivet.
(18) I am not here to do a character work-up on someone who lost his life less than 24 hours ago.” Koval asked protesters to remain calm and said the police department would continue to protect their right to assembly, “whatever [protesters’] compunction might be.” Demonstrations that began on Saturday afternoon continued on the streets of Madison as the news conference took place.
(19) A lot of Israelis said, ‘If you’re telling us we need to choose between them and us, then we choose us, without any compunction.’” Everyone I spoke to about B’Tselem acknowledged that the second intifada had made the group’s fundamental message – that Israelis ought to care about the human rights of individual Palestinians and recognise the military occupation’s abuses as the primary human-rights violations in the region – much, much harder for Israelis to accept.
(20) But he added that if the UK suspended arms sales, “be in no doubt that we would be vacating a space that would rapidly be filled by other western countries who would happily supply arms with nothing like the same compunctions or criteria or respect for humanitarian law.
Conscience
Definition:
(n.) Knowledge of one's own thoughts or actions; consciousness.
(n.) The faculty, power, or inward principle which decides as to the character of one's own actions, purposes, and affections, warning against and condemning that which is wrong, and approving and prompting to that which is right; the moral faculty passing judgment on one's self; the moral sense.
(n.) The estimate or determination of conscience; conviction or right or duty.
(n.) Tenderness of feeling; pity.
Example Sentences:
(1) Perhaps it’s the lot of people like my colleagues here in the centre and me to wrestle with our consciences, shed tears, lose sleep and try to make the best of a very bad, heart-breaking job and leave the rest of the world to party, get pissed and celebrate Christmas.
(2) Last September, propelled by the success of the Irish referendum and the US supreme court decision, the idea that Australian parliamentarians should, as a matter of conscience, reconsider marriage equality was gathering powerful force.
(3) The move will increase pressure on Nick Clegg to give his MPs a free vote on the issue, something normally confined to issues of conscience.
(4) "Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later.
(5) My act of conscience began with a statement: "I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.
(6) He added, in an interview with BBC Breakfast: "We're hoping people's conscience will really lead them to decide that using a hosepipe in these circumstances is not the right thing to do."
(7) "I ask all Americans with a conscience to shun anything and everything to do with the murderous state of Georgia."
(8) History will judge you and you must at last answer your own conscience.” About 40 of the demonstrators wore orange jumpsuits, more than half of whom also donned black hoods over their faces, and one held up his wrists in handcuffs.
(9) A conscience clause, however, will allow individual clergy to opt out of conducting same-sex marriages.
(10) "What we are seeing now are just 'conscience' demonstrations, but when people really find it hard to make ends meet and they become 'necessity' demonstrations there will be a social explosion."
(11) In a 1958 debate on marriage, Robert Menzies himself that declared that the issue “closely touches the individual conscience of members”, adding that “though it will be a government measure, it shall not be treated as a party measure”.
(12) Age, sex, origin, duration of illness before attending the Institute, Conscience variations, clinical crisis types, condition of Status Epilepticus appearance and unleashing factors were considered.
(13) I think they need to be respected, assumed to have a brain and a conscience, and left to live their lives as they choose.
(14) A major proportion of that prison population is prisoners of conscience, like Rajab.
(15) Some MPs are eyeing Vince Cable's complex conscience.
(16) History will judge Syria’s descent into a hydra-headed war as a stain on the world’s conscience.
(17) But the bedeviled foray also works as a potent allegory on the slow, vice-like workings of conscience, as guilt hunts down the protagonists with the shrieking remorselessness of Greek furies.
(18) Asked whether they should resign, Robin Geffen, chief investment officer of the fund manager Neptune and a leading critic of the deal, said it would be up to their "individual consciences", but noted the aborted transaction had been "an absurdly ambitious attempt by the Pru to buy a large Asian company, at a very high price, with a very unclear strategy".
(19) In a letter to assembly men and women the Presbyterian church said it was "not merely an issue of conscience for Christian people and churches, but a very significant one for the whole of society".
(20) Downing Street stressed that David Cameron regarded same-sex marriage, as well as gay adoption, as conscience issues.