Word.ws English Dictionary

having mercy

having mercy is the present participle and gerund 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 having mercy

What is having mercy the present participle and gerund of?
Having mercy is the present participle and gerund of have mercy.

Words near having mercy in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: having 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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Cite this entry: “having mercy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/having_mercy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.