What's the difference between compunction and shame?

Compunction


Definition:

  • (n.) A pricking; stimulation.
  • (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.

Shame


Definition:

  • (n.) A painful sensation excited by a consciousness of guilt or impropriety, or of having done something which injures reputation, or of the exposure of that which nature or modesty prompts us to conceal.
  • (n.) Reproach incurred or suffered; dishonor; ignominy; derision; contempt.
  • (n.) The cause or reason of shame; that which brings reproach, and degrades a person in the estimation of others; disgrace.
  • (n.) The parts which modesty requires to be covered; the private parts.
  • (v. t.) To make ashamed; to excite in (a person) a comsciousness of guilt or impropriety, or of conduct derogatory to reputation; to put to shame.
  • (v. t.) To cover with reproach or ignominy; to dishonor; to disgrace.
  • (v. t.) To mock at; to deride.
  • (n.) To be ashamed; to feel shame.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Stray bottles were thrown over the barriers towards officers to cheers and chants of: “Shame on you, we’re human too.” The Met deployed what it described as a “significant policing operation”, including drafting in thousands of extra officers to tackle expected unrest, after previous events ended in arrests and clashes with police across the centre of the capital.
  • (2) The Bible treats suicide in a factual way and not as wrong or shameful.
  • (3) However, there's been very little mention of what happened in Manchester today – shame on you.
  • (4) There can’t be something, someone that could fix this and chooses not to.” Years of agnosticism and an open attitude to religious beliefs thrust under the bus, acknowledging the shame that comes from sitting down with those the world forgot.
  • (5) Yogi Breisner, performance manager for the British eventing team, said: "It is a real shame that it has been called off, especially in an Olympic year when a lot of the riders and horses would have been on show.
  • (6) 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.
  • (7) "The whole thing was stupid, Donald called him at once to discuss it, he had such a go at him, I mean, fuck, it's a shame we didn't record it, he fucked him up good, had such a proper fucking go at him."
  • (8) Significant differences (p less than 0.05-p less than 0.01) were found, suggesting that the Eastern mothers strongly expressed their shame, whereas the Western mothers 'felt ashamed' to express it at all.
  • (9) For now, the overriding feeling is helplessness, tinged with shame for the last year of passivity.
  • (10) He was looking down at his feet - and she realised he felt the shame, too.
  • (11) Frankly, it is rather a shame that he does not fall under the Treasure Act (to do so he would have to be over 300 years old and be composed of more than 10% gold or silver).
  • (12) I look back at those moments with shame – you look to your parents to protect you so, when it seems they are falling apart, you lash out at them because you feel vulnerable.
  • (13) We wanted a place where men could discuss masculine topics without facing the same public shaming outcry that happens on social media sites – feminists are quick on the trigger to try to take down anything they consider wrong … Milo Yiannopoulos lost his verified status on Twitter because of his views on masculinity.
  • (14) Digital culture has hardly helped, adding revenge porn, trolls and stranger-shaming to the list of uncomfortable modern obstacles.
  • (15) A boss on some astronomic pay packet may be held back by shame from paying his cleaners too little relative to that, but emotion will not get in the way of ruthlessness if the process all takes place behind the veil of some corporate contract.
  • (16) "The house itself isn't very old ... it's a great shame."
  • (17) This year, on the first day, I bumped into a fellow market regular who was hawking a DVD title (no longer a badge of shame).
  • (18) Reda Eldanbouki, director of the women’s centre for guidance and legal awareness, an Egyptian NGO based in al-Mansoura, said it was shameful for Hijazi to ask the eight presenters to only come back in front of camera once their appearance has become “appropriate”.
  • (19) I got a hint of the price she has paid for her ambidextrous approach to cultural identify after her last interview was published, when a shocking number of British Pakistani men got in touch to denounce her as a shameful infidel.
  • (20) He said similar “name and shame” legislation had run afoul of the first amendment and that the rule may be unconstitutional.