Word.ws English Dictionary

had mercy

had mercy is the simple past and past participle of have mercy.

Meaning of have mercy

Verb

have mercy (third-person singular simple present has mercy, present participle having mercy, simple past and past participle had mercy)

  1. (imperative, usually) To show mercy or compassion; to stop inflicting punishment or a barrage.
    • "I have learnt it!" cried the old man. "Oh, have mercy on me in this hour, if, in my love for her, so young and good, I slandered Nature in the breasts of mothers rendered desperate! Pity my presumption, wickedness, and ignorance, and save her!"1844 (date written), Charles Dickens, “Fourth Quarter”, in The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year out and a New Year in, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1845, →OCLC...
    Synonyms:
    spare

See all 2 meanings of have mercy

Questions about had mercy

What is had mercy the simple past and past participle of?
Had mercy is the simple past and past participle of have mercy.

Words near had mercy in the dictionary

  1. had Jesus in one's heart
  2. had kittens
  3. had legs
  4. had like
  5. had little time for
  6. had mercy
  7. had more chins than a Chinese phone book
  8. had more chins than a Chinese phonebook
  9. had more chins than Chinatown
  10. had more money than God
  11. had more of something in one's finger than

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: had mercy (page history and authors); have mercy (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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