(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.
Guilt
Definition:
(v. t.) The criminality and consequent exposure to punishment resulting from willful disobedience of law, or from morally wrong action; the state of one who has broken a moral or political law; crime; criminality; offense against right.
(v. t.) Exposure to any legal penalty or forfeiture.
Example Sentences:
(1) The tinsel coiled around a jug of squash and bauble in the strip lighting made a golf-ball size knot of guilt burn in my throat.
(2) Godiya Usman, an 18-year-old finalist who jumped off the back of the truck, said she feels trapped by survivor's guilt.
(3) Kate Connolly , Ian Traynor and Siobhán Dowling cover the "guilt and resentment" Germany's savers feel over pressure to do more to end the euro crisis.
(4) The irony of this type of self-manipulation is that ultimately the child, or adult, finds himself again burdened by impotence, though it is the impotence of guilt rather than that of shame.
(5) Mother's guilt Fifty years on, the scars have not properly healed for Bach, now 68.
(6) Not only did it make every grocery-store run a guilt trip; it made me feel selfish for caring more about birds in the present than about people in the future.
(7) But Ruby Tweedie, another local resident, said: "There have been so many doubts about his guilt that it's only fair that the man, who has only a few months to live, should be shown mercy."
(8) Still others may feel pain, anger, and guilt for years after the death.
(9) A request for a pardon would require an admission of guilt, which the women have said they will not give.
(10) The pseudo-memories coupled with influence from authority figures convinced him of his guilt for 6 months.
(11) Brighter children had a higher ideal self-image, greater self-image disparity, and marginally more guilt than children of average intellectual abilities.
(12) To a generation of young Germans, raised under the crushing, introspective guilt of postwar Germany , the sight of such facile antics was simply incomprehensible.
(13) Perceived high amounts of calories or fat triggered stronger feelings of guilt and danger for restrained control subjects and patients (especially bulimic patients) as compared with unrestrained control subjects.
(14) Libya agreed to pay billions of dollars in compensation to families of the victims because of demands from the UN, not because it admitted guilt over the worst act of terrorism in British history.
(15) This study was designed to determine whether normal control subjects (n = 17) and depressed outpatients (n = 72) differed with respect to the extent and conditions under which they reported dysfunctional guilt.
(16) Feelings of guilt were related significantly to disaffected patterns such as dogmatism (p less than .001), hostility (p less than .001), and aggression (p less than .05), which suggests a turning inward of feelings of anger and disappointment in addition to their outward expression.
(17) Stories poured in, full of anger, guilt, powerlessness and loss, ones of encouragement, optimism and advice, and they are still coming.
(18) I’m worried this could create a culture of fear and guilt.
(19) ; psychotherapy for anxiety, depression, guilt, anger, hostility, frustration, isolation, and a diminished sense of self-esteem; visualization for health improvement; and, dealing with death anxiety and other related issues.
(20) Symptoms of guilt, loss of concentration and memory were significantly more in urban patients whereas gastrointestinal somatic symptoms were significantly higher in rural subjects.