Clemency is mercy shown by reducing a punishment. Grant clemency, an appeal for clemency, plead for clemency.
It is a power rather than a right: clemency is granted by an authority that could have refused, which is what separates it from an appeal, where the sentence is argued to be wrong. In the United States a governor or the president may grant it. Note clement, meaning mild, which is used of weather far more than of people; and inclement, which is the weather word everybody knows.
1nounclemencyMercy shown by reducing a punishment.
“The prisoner's family begged the president for clemency.”
clemency is an act of mercy.
Latin clementia comes from clemens, mild or merciful. Clement and inclement come from the same mildness, which is why the weather word and the mercy word are one.
Latin
clēmentia
Middle English
clemency
English, today
clemency
From Middle English clemency, clemencie, from Latin clēmentia. Gradually eclipsed Middle English clemence, from Old French clemence, from the same Latin origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA