compunctious

English

Alternative forms

• compunctuous

Adjective

compunctious (comparative more compunctious, superlative most compunctious)

1. Exhibiting compunctions, scruples, feelings of guilt.
   • 1606, Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5:

     Come, you spirits
     That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
     And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
     Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
     Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
     That no compunctious visitings of nature
     Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
     The effect and it!

   • 1796, Edmund Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord:

     Nothing can be conceived more hard than the heart of a thoroughbred metaphysician. It comes nearer to the cold malignity of a wicked spirit than to the frailty and passion of a man. It is like that of the principle of evil himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated, defecated evil. It is no easy operation to eradicate humanity from the human breast. What Shakspeare calls “the compunctious visitings of nature” will sometimes knock at their hearts, and protest against their murderous speculations. But they have a means of compounding with their nature. Their humanity is not dissolved. They only give it a long prorogation.

Derived terms

• compunctiously
• compunctiousness