Word.ws English Dictionary

compunctious

compunctious adjective: exhibiting compunctions, scruples, feelings of guilt.

Adjective

compunctious (comparative more compunctious, superlative most compunctious)

  1. Exhibiting compunctions, scruples, feelings of guilt.
    • Come you Spirits,
      That tend on mortall thoughts, vnſex me here,
      And fill me from the Crowne to the Toe, top-full
      Of direſt Crueltie: make thick my blood,
      Stop vp th’acceſſe, and paſſage to Remorſe,
      That no compunctious viſitings of Nature
      Shake my fell purpoſe, nor keepe peace betweene
      Th’effect...c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • 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...1796, Edmund Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord

Forms of compunctious

comparativemore compunctious
superlativemost compunctious
alternative formcompunctuous

Origin of compunctious

From the stem of compunction + -ous; compare factious. Apparently taken up in modern use from Macbeth by William Shakespeare (see quotation).

Words formed from compunctious

Questions about compunctious

What does compunctious mean?
Compunctious means exhibiting compunctions, scruples, feelings of guilt.
What part of speech is compunctious?
Compunctious is an adjective.

Words near compunctious in the dictionary

  1. compulsoryness
  2. compunct
  3. compunction
  4. compunctionless
  5. compunctions
  6. compunctious
  7. compunctiously
  8. compunctiousness
  9. compunctis
  10. compunctive
  11. compunctuous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: compunctious (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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