# compassion

Pronunciation: say "kuhm-PASH-uhn" /kəmˈpæʃ.ən/

## Noun

1. Deep awareness of another person's suffering, together with a wish to relieve it.
   - Simple: A strong wish to help someone when you see that they are suffering.
   - _The nurse treated every patient with genuine compassion, no matter how difficult they were._
   - _Acts of compassion toward strangers can slowly transform an entire community._
2. Deep awareness of the individual experiences of suffering, whether one's own or another's, together with the motivation to relieve them: the basis of the term self-compassion.
   - Simple: Deep awareness of suffering (your own or someone else's) that makes you want to ease it.
   - _Psychologists found that showing compassion toward oneself reduces anxiety after failure._
   - _The program trains people to extend compassion to their own struggles as well as to others'._

## Verb

3. To feel pity for someone in their suffering; to be moved by another's distress. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To feel sorry for someone because they are suffering.

## Origin

This word came through Middle English and Old French from Ecclesiastical Latin compassio ('sympathy'), which goes back to Latin compati ('to suffer together with'), formed from com- ('together') and pati ('to suffer').

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/compassion (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).