REPENTANCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does repentance mean? 

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

1. remorse for your past conduct

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• REPENTANCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Remorse for your past conduct

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

penance; penitence; repentance

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

compunction; remorse; self-reproach (a feeling of deep regret (usually for some misdeed))

Derivation:

repent (feel remorse for; feel sorry for; be contrite about)

repentant (feeling or expressing remorse for misdeeds)

 Context examples 

Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was a characteristic feature in this repentance, that I was fain to ask what these two men had done, to be there at all.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Let me advise you to gain at least the small credit for repentance and confession, since there are still some details which we can only learn from your lips.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“Your repentance,” I said, is now superfluous.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She felt the engagement to be a source of repentance and misery to each—she dissolved it.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

“May the foul fiend strike me dumb!” cried the bowman in hot repentance; but both the palmer and Alleyne threw up their hands to stop him.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“I ought to be pole-axed, I ought,” he cried in bitter repentance.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought its own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted;—nor that he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

What so natural, as that anger should pass away and repentance succeed it?

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

As Challenger spoke of his pterodactyl I glanced at Professor Summerlee, and for the first time I seemed to see some signs of a dawning credulity and repentance.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)