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Full of mercy; having or exercising mercy; disposed to pity and spare offenders; unwilling to punish. The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious. Ex. xxxiv. 6. Be merciful, great duke, to men of mold. Shak.

To pity. [Obs.] Spenser.

y, of things; as, a merciless tyrant; merciless waves. The foe is merciless, and will not pity. Shak.

Disposition to exercise compassion or favor; pity; compassion; willingness to spare or to help. In whom mercy lacketh and is not founden. Sir T. Elyot.

To shut up; to inclose; to confine, as in a cage or other inclosure. More pity that the eagle should be mewed. Shak. Close mewed in their sedans, for fear of air. Dryden.

Compassion; pity; mercy. [Obs.]

soften by making moist; to make tender. It moistened not his executioner's heart with any pity. Fuller.

h compassion on them. Matt. ix. 36. [The use of images] in orations and poetry is to move pity or terror. Felton.

or a subordinate civil officer who executes cruel orders of a superior without protest or pity; -- sometimes applied to bailiffs, constables, etc. Thackeray. With unabated ardor the vindictive man of law and his myrmidons pressed forward. W. H. Ainsworth.

rruption of God's; -- formerly used in oaths and ejaculatory phrases. "Ods bodikin." "Ods pity." Shak.

Toward; for; -- indicating the object of some passion; as, have pity or compassion on him.

Affecting or moving the tender emotions, esp. pity or grief; full of pathos; as, a pathetic song or story. "Pathetic action." Macaulay. No theory of the passions can teach a man to be pathetic. E. Porter. Pathetic muscle (Anat.), the superior oblique muscle of the eye. -- Pathetic nerve (Anat.), the fourth cranial, or…

lings or excites emotions and passions, esp., that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality; as, the pathos of a picture, of a poem, or of a cry. The combination of incident, and the pathos of catastrophe. T. Warton.…

o touch with feeling; to make sensible; to move deeply; as, to penetrate one's heart with pity. Shak. The translator of Homer should penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and directness of Homer's style. M. Arnold.

A reddish fleshy herb of the genus Monotropa (M. hypopitys), formerly thought to be parasitic on the roots of pine trees, but more probably saprophytic.

Evincing pity, compassion, or sympathy; compassionate; tender. "[She] piteous of his case." Pope. She was so charitable and so pitous. Chaucer.

Deserving pity; wworthy of, or exciting, compassion; miserable; lamentable; piteous; as, pitiable persons; a pitiable condition; pitiable wretchedness.

Full of pity; tender-hearted; compassionate; kind; merciful; sympathetic. The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy. James v. 11.

Destitute of pity; hard-hearted; merciless; as, a pitilessmaster; pitiless elements.

Worthy of pity or sympathy; -- used also sometimes as a term of endearment, or as an expression of modesty, and sometimes as a word of contempt. And for mine own poor part, Look you, I'll go pray. Shak. Poor, little, pretty, fluttering thing. Prior.