merciful

What it means

1. Showing mercy.

   `Listen, Holly. Thou art a good and honest man, and I fain would spare thee; but, oh! it is so hard for woman to be merciful.'

   1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

   1 more example

   The murderer, he recalled, had been tried and sentenced to imprisonment for life, but was pardoned by a merciful governor after serving a year of his sentence.

   1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC

   Synonyms: pitiful, relentful, ruthful, clement, lenient, merciable, mercied, pitiful · Antonyms: cruel, merciless, barbarous, bowelless, brutal, compassionless, cruel, flagitious

In a sentence

`Listen, Holly. Thou art a good and honest man, and I fain would spare thee; but, oh! it is so hard for woman to be merciful.'

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

Where it comes from

1. Middle Englishmerciful
2. Englishmerciful

From Middle English merciful, mercyful, equivalent to mercy + -ful. Displaced native Old English mildheort.