Compassionate means quick to feel and ease other people's pain. A compassionate doctor, compassionate leave, deeply compassionate.
Compassionate leave is time off granted for a death or serious illness in the family, and compassionate grounds is the formal phrase for a decision made out of kindness rather than rule. Compassion is more active than sympathy: sympathy feels with somebody, and compassion wants to do something about it. Note compassion fatigue, meaning the exhaustion of caring, which is a recognised occupational problem in medicine and aid work.
1adjectivecompassionateQuick to feel and ease other people's pain.
“She was a compassionate teacher and a demanding one.”
compassionate is a quality of kindness.
Also accepted in games: caring
Latin compassio is com-, with, plus pati, to suffer — suffering with. It was coined to translate the Greek word behind sympathy, which is built the same way, so the two words are the same idea in two languages.
French
compassionné
English, today
compassionate
Built from
A pseudo-Latin form of French compassionné, past participle of compassionner (“feel sorry for”). by surface analysis, compassion + -ate.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA