Sunday, May 11, 2008

365 New Words a Year [Merriam Webster] (Workman Publishing 12/28/7: compunction

compunction n 1: anxiety arising from awareness of guilt 2: distress of mind over an anticipated action or result 3: a twinge of misgiving : scruple.
The M-W website lists these first two definitions as 1a and 1b, and the third as 2. The second definition listed here seems like worry, seems like it describes when you're thinking something is going to turn out a certain way so you start worrying about how that effects things, when in fact your worry is jumping the gun. And that's probably why it was grouped with the first definition online, to get away from the sense of worry. The example given on the M-W website is "showed no compunction in planning devilish engines of…destruction — Havelock Ellis". The Did You Know part of the calendar page traces the etymology "to Latin compungere, meaning 'to prick hard' or 'to sting'." It says "the sting of a guilty conscience—or a conscience that is provoked by the contemplation of doing something wrong—can prick very hard indeed." Rating 9/10 scruples.
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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. --Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"