Word of the Day

: February 2, 2015

compunction

noun kum-PUNK-shun

What It Means

1 : anxiety arising from awareness of guilt

2 : distress of mind over an anticipated action or result

3 : a twinge of misgiving : scruple

compunction in Context

A diligent editor, Michelle feels no compunction about deleting words and phrases from even the most beautifully written paragraph for the sake of space or clarity.

"The council of generals who took power from Mr. Mubarak had feared a public backlash too much to ever allow the former president's release, but Mr. Sisi's government felt no such compunction, Mr. Bahgat said." - David D. Kirkpatrick and Merna Thomas, The New York Times, November 30, 2014

Did You Know?

An old proverb says "a guilty conscience needs no accuser," and it's true that the sting of a guilty conscience-or a conscience that is provoked by the contemplation of doing something wrong-can prick very hard indeed. The sudden guilty "prickings" of compunction are reflected in the word's etymological history. Compunction comes (via the Anglo-French compunction and the Middle English compunccioun) from the Latin compungere, which means "to prick hard" or "to sting." Compungere, in turn, derives from pungere, meaning "to prick," which is the ancestor of some other prickly words in English, such as "puncture" and even "point."