Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use merciful in a sentence

10 example sentences · adjective

Merciful means showing mercy. Example: “His extreme lawfulness made him righteous, but did it make him merciful?”

Examples of merciful by meaning

adjectiveShowing mercy.

  • The murderer, he recalled, had been tried and sentenced to imprisonment for life, but was pardoned by a merciful governor after serving a year of his sentence.1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company...

More sentences with merciful

  • His extreme lawfulness made him righteous, but did it make him merciful?From the entry lawfulness
  • He's very legalistic, so let's hope the law is just and merciful as well as strict.From the entry legalistic
  • These encouraging messages will guide you to the merciful heart of Jesus-Your Jesus of Mercy.1999, Gianna T. Sullivan, I Am Your Jesus of Mercy. From the entry Jesus of Mercy
  • The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.1917, Bible (Jewish Publication Society), Exodus xxxiv. 6. From the entry long-suffering
  • Your merciful and loving Divine Savior, Jesus of Mercy.2017, A Soul, Primer One: The Warning and Its Aftermath. From the entry Jesus of Mercy
  • And death will be more merciful than he could have hoped for at the hands of the Russian.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 85. From the entry Russian
  • Benumbed by the sun's Septemberly cool deceit, A bee drags its wings through the towering grass; Revived once more by a merciful breath, Westward it hastily flies.2004, Walter Schweppe, Sins of My Youth, page 40. From the entry Septemberly
  • The idea of excusing the self-killer by attributing to him the fictitious malady called "insanity" was invented as a tactic for the merciful treatment of his survivors.2002, Thomas Szasz, Fatal Freedom, page 43. From the entry self-killer
  • Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four?1918, Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Notes from Underground”, in Constance Garnett, transl., White Nights and Other Stories, pages 58–9. From the entry nature

Meaning of merciful

  1. adjective Showing mercy.

Full definition of merciful

Questions about merciful in a sentence

How do you use merciful in a sentence?
Merciful is used as an adjective. For example: “His extreme lawfulness made him righteous, but did it make him merciful?”
What is a short sentence with merciful?
“Your merciful and loving Divine Savior, Jesus of Mercy.”
What does merciful mean?
Merciful means showing mercy.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: merciful (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use merciful in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/merciful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.