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Definition
guilt for a misdeed; or a feeling that it would be wrong to do something- While most developed nations recognize the embargo, China ignores it without compunction.
compunction = a feeling of deep regret (usually for some misdeed)
- This man has, I repeat, no place in a community whose basic principles he flouts without compunction.Albert Camus -- The Stranger
- Yet the girl felt nothing for her mistress, no compunction, but slept and made love with Eurymakhos.Homer -- The Odyssey
- Her look smote him with compunction, and he cried out, as if he saw her drowning in a dream:Edith Wharton -- Ethan Frome
- You say you aren't an enemy of Nephilim, but you set each of us against each other, family against family, wrecking lives without compunction.Cassandra Clare -- City of Glass
- Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purposeWilliam Shakespeare -- Macbeth - He ruins a man with as little compunction as one could fancy him, in his younger days, pulling the legs from a fly.Oppenheim, E. Phillips -- The Malefactor
- Struggles and resolves had transformed themselves into compunction and anxiety.Eliot, George -- Adam Bede
- Will the creature feel any compunction at tyrannizing over them?Plato -- The Republic
- We assented vigorously, repeatedly, and without compunction.Conrad, Joseph -- Tales of Unrest
- But they were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement of which Newland Archer felt no trace.Wharton, Edith -- The Age of Innocence
- Will had bruised her pride too sorely for her to feel any compunction towards him and Dorothea: her own injury seemed much the greater.Eliot, George -- Middlemarch
- It may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no touch of compunction, remorse, or pity.Dickens, Charles -- Bleak House
- Linton stood looking at her in sudden compunction and fear.Bronte, Emily -- Wuthering Heights
- Oh," she added with a priceless air of compunction, "he is such a charming gentleman.Conrad, Joseph -- The Arrow of Gold
- Thereupon the confessor quitted his penitent with an air full of compunction.Dumas, Alexandre -- Ten Years Later
- But my father has this very sum, five thousand pounds, and, as I tell him, I owe him so much that I have no compunction about owing him more.Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan -- Beyond the City
- He beheld her strike her breast with the compunction of a Christian woman.Dumas, Alexandre -- The Man in the Iron Mask
- I could take a human life, if necessary, with far less compunction than that of a poor, unreasoning, irresponsible brute.Burroughs, Edgar Rice -- A Princess of Mars
- Well, just try to remember how many instances of compunction you have seen.Conrad, Joseph -- Chance
compunction = regret or guilt
compunction = guilt or feeling of regret
compunction = a feeling of deep regret and guilt
compunction = guilt for a misdeed
compunctious = pricking the conscience (causing the feeling that it would be wrong to do something)