MERCIFUL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does merciful mean? 

• MERCIFUL (adjective)
  The adjective MERCIFUL has 2 senses:

1. showing or giving mercy

2. (used conventionally of royalty and high nobility) gracious

  Familiarity information: MERCIFUL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MERCIFUL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Showing or giving mercy

Context example:

a merciful god

Also:

clement ((used of persons or behavior) inclined to show mercy)

compassionate (showing or having compassion)

soft (compassionate and kind; conciliatory)

humane (marked or motivated by concern with the alleviation of suffering)

kind (having or showing a tender and considerate and helpful nature; used especially of persons and their behavior)

Antonym:

merciless (having or showing no mercy)

Derivation:

mercifulness (leniency and compassion shown toward offenders by a person or agency charged with administering justice)

mercifulness (the feeling that motivates compassion)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(used conventionally of royalty and high nobility) gracious

Context example:

our merciful king

Similar:

gracious (characterized by charm, good taste, and generosity of spirit)

Derivation:

mercifulness (a disposition to be kind and forgiving)

 Context examples 

Merciful God! the Count has been to him, and there is some new scheme of terror afoot!

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

But when she was led in she ate nothing, and said: “The gracious and merciful God who has supported me in the tower, will soon set me free.”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

But they continued to call us by name and appeal to us, for God's sake, to be merciful and not leave them to die in such a place.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

“Do be merciful. What is it you can do?”

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

It was the choicest gift of Heaven; and Anne viewed her friend as one of those instances in which, by a merciful appointment, it seems designed to counterbalance almost every other want.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

We were all disposed to wonder, but it seems to have been the merciful appointment of Providence that the heart which knew no guile should not suffer.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

As His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

And when the time comes—may it come soon, if it be His merciful pleasure!—when my death shall release her from constraint, I shall close my eyes upon her honoured face, with unbounded confidence and love; and leave her, with no sorrow then, to happier and brighter days.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely personal considerations.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That if his majesty, in consideration of your services, and pursuant to his own merciful disposition, would please to spare your life, and only give orders to put out both your eyes, he humbly conceived, that by this expedient justice might in some measure be satisfied, and all the world would applaud the lenity of the emperor, as well as the fair and generous proceedings of those who have the honour to be his counsellors.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)