(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.
Repentance
Definition:
(n.) The act of repenting, or the state of being penitent; sorrow for what one has done or omitted to do; especially, contrition for sin.
Example Sentences:
(1) Our fast will continue for as long as we prayerfully discern that we stand in need of repentance as a Church.
(2) Russian law does not make repentance a condition for an early release.
(3) The first test is whether he will appoint any repentant Big Beasts to his shadow cabinet.
(4) It would also underline that true rehabilitation of offenders requires remorse and repentance as otherwise the punishment has not served it’s underlying purpose; it could be argued that the offender has not really paid the full price for their crime and so forfeits their entitlement to rebuild their life without restriction.
(5) The Gove era saw much activity in haste and less repentance in leisure.
(6) But proud or repentant about their body art, more than 100 employees at the Osaka city government may have to have their tattoos removed or search for another job following the local mayor's crackdown on tattoos.
(7) "Prosecutors said Liu had a very good attitude in confession and a strong desire to repent," Xinhua reported.
(8) Updated at 11.56am BST 11.41am BST Predict in haste, repent at leisure .
(9) Alyokhina was refused early release after prosecutors said she hadn't repented of her crime and had violated prison rules.
(10) "Is it unimaginable that those who plotted, participated or played any role in the massacre of Luxor, become the rulers even if they renounced and repented it," said Tharwat Agamy, the head of Luxor's tourism chamber.
(11) Finally he remembered a man who had been suspended by the ANC for some minor infraction of discipline and who was only too pleased to show repentance by driving his president anywhere he wanted at any time of day or night.
(12) He survived an assassination attempt in Jeddah in September 2009 when a Saudi Aqap operative named Abdullah al-Asiri feigned repentance for his jihadi views in a meeting with the prince then blew himself up with a bomb concealed in his anus.
(13) A lesbian woman due to be deported from Britain to Uganda has been told by a Ugandan MP that she must "repent or reform" when she returns home.
(14) It was the bishop of Norwich, who speaks for the Church of England on the media, who pointed out in a Lords debate that this wilful isolation, this stubborn failure to face reality, was making things worse for the press: "The sad thing is that there has been surprisingly little public repentance and a great deal of self-justification and lapses of memory.
(15) Rejected as a candidate for the priesthood, the English author Frederick Rolfe wrote, under the pseudonym “Baron Corvo”, a novel, Hadrian the Seventh (1904), in which a failed priest is later made pope by a repentant Vatican.
(16) As they say – marry in haste and repent at leisure."
(17) Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister, has said he thinks they should be released, while the Russian Orthodox church has called for them to be released if they repent.
(18) Repentance, the process of change in Evangelical Renewal Therapy, is achieved through the analysis of moral action, rebuke, confession, prayer, recompense, and mortification through good works.
(19) If someone has not been convicted we cannot judge people on rumours, without proof,” he said, stressing that his decree did not close the door to mafia figures seeking to repent.
(20) As well as calling on the church to show "real repentance for the lack of welcome and acceptance extended to homosexual people in the past", the report also urges it to think about whether it is reasonable to allow lay people to be in sexually active same-sex relationships while requiring celibacy from its clergy and bishops, saying: "In the facilitated discussions it will be important to reflect on the extent to which the laity and the clergy should continue to observe such different disciplines."