CONTRITION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does contrition mean? 

• CONTRITION (noun)
  The noun CONTRITION has 1 sense:

1. sorrow for sin arising from fear of damnation

  Familiarity information: CONTRITION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONTRITION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Sorrow for sin arising from fear of damnation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

attrition; contriteness; contrition

Hypernyms ("contrition" is a kind of...):

regret; rue; ruefulness; sorrow (sadness associated with some wrong done or some disappointment)

 Context examples 

She felt for Harriet, with pain and with contrition; but no flight of generosity run mad, opposing all that could be probable or reasonable, entered her brain.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

My part in them, said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, has much matter for regret—for deep regret, and deep contrition, Trotwood, you well know.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The self-reproach and contrition which are displayed in his remark appear to me to be the signs of a healthy mind rather than of a guilty one.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A large and still increasing family, an husband disabled for active service, but not the less equal to company and good liquor, and a very small income to supply their wants, made her eager to regain the friends she had so carelessly sacrificed; and she addressed Lady Bertram in a letter which spoke so much contrition and despondence, such a superfluity of children, and such a want of almost everything else, as could not but dispose them all to a reconciliation.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Here ceased the rapid flow of her self-reproving spirit; and Elinor, impatient to soothe, though too honest to flatter, gave her instantly that praise and support which her frankness and her contrition so well deserved.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

In the warmth of true contrition, she would call upon her the very next morning, and it should be the beginning, on her side, of a regular, equal, kindly intercourse.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

I found them to be the perfect isolation of prisoners—so that no one man in confinement there, knew anything about another; and the reduction of prisoners to a wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition and repentance.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In one moment her imagination placed before her a letter from Willoughby, full of tenderness and contrition, explanatory of all that had passed, satisfactory, convincing; and instantly followed by Willoughby himself, rushing eagerly into the room to inforce, at her feet, by the eloquence of his eyes, the assurances of his letter.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

For myself, I felt so much self-reproach and contrition for my part in what had happened, that nothing would have enabled me to keep back my tears but the fear that Steerforth, who often looked at me, I saw, might think it unfriendly—or, I should rather say, considering our relative ages, and the feeling with which I regarded him, undutiful—if I showed the emotion which distressed me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)