Pass-, Pati- words:
“compassion” to “uncompassionate”
pass-, pati- (Latin: suffering, feeling; enduring).
If you would like to take a self-scoring quiz over some of the words in this section, then click
Pass-, Pati-Quiz which is located at the end of this set of definitions so you can see how much you know about these
“pass-, pati-” words.
compassion, compassionable:
1. Having sorrow or consideration for the sufferings or troubles of another or others, accompanied by an urge to help; deep sympathy or pity.
2. Suffering together with another, participation in suffering; fellow-feeling, sympathy.
3. The feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve.
Compassion is the sympathy with which some people remember the homeless because it costs nothing.
—Based on an Evan Esar quote.
compassionate:
1. Feeling or showing compassion; sympathetic, kindhearted, pitying.
2. Affected with, characterized by, or expressing compassion; pitiful, sympathetic.
Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and settling them to do useful work.
—Aldous Huxley
compassionless:
Having no sympathy or pity; without compassion.
compassive:
Feeling or showing compassion; sympathetic, compassionate, pitiful.
compassivity:
A condition of suffering, or of being affected, together with another.
compatible:
1. Getting along well together; in agreement or harmony; rapport.
2. Mutually tolerant; capable of being admitted together, or of existing together in the same subject; accordant, consistent, congruous, agreeable.
compatibility:
Mutual tolerance; consistency, congruity, rapport, like-mindedness.
counterpassion:
A passion opposed to or the opposite of another.
dispassion:
Absence of passion, bias, or emotion; condition of coolness toward someone or something; apathy.
dispassionate, dispassionately:
Free from passion, emotions, or bias; not influenced by strong feeling, especially not affected by personal or emotional involvement; calm, composed; impartial; unemotional.
impassion [verb form]:
To fill with passion; to arouse emotionally; to inflame with intense feeling; to infuse passion into; to stir the passions or feelings of; to excite deeply or strongly.
impassionate:
1. Without feeling or passion; calm, dispassionate.
2. Free from, or not governed by, passion; calm, dispassionate.
impassioned, impassionedly:
Filled with passion; having or showing strong feeling. Implies warmth and intensity without violence and suggests fluent verbal expression; ardent, as an impassioned oration; fervent, fiery, stirring.
Did you notice that the im- prefix of impassion and impassioned are intensive while the im- prefix used with the previous word (impassionate) has the meaning of “no, not, lacking,” etc.? It shows that one can not depend on these prefixes to mean the same thing.
Not too many years ago, just about every gasoline truck in the U.S. had large signs painted on them that said, INFLAMMABLE. Since most people thought that the prefix in- meant “not”, they interpreted INFLAMMABLE to mean NOT FLAMMABLE. Now the trucks carry the painted signs: FLAMMABLE to eliminate any confusion. The Family Word Finder, a Reader‘s Digest publication, says, “Flammable has now replaced its older synonym inflammable [from Latin inflammare, to kindle) in technical and commercial usage, where the word FLAMMABLE on a dangerously combustible product is thought to serve as a more unmistakable warning.”
impassive, impassivity, impassiveness:
1. Not feeling pain; not feeling or showing emotion; expressionless, unresponsive to something that might normally excite interest or emotion; insensible, unconscious; placid, serene, calm, unperturbed; apathetic.
2. Deprived of feeling or sensation; insensible, unconscious.
impatience:
1. Lacking patience; the inability to bear suffering; discomfort and annoyance with calmness or composure; passionate, ardent, anxious.
2. Failure to bear suffering, discomfort, annoyance, etc. with equanimity; irritability, irascibility.
Impatience is waiting in a hurry.
—Evan Esar
impatient:
1. Feeling or showing a lack of patience; feeling or showing annoyance because of delay, opposition; agitation, irritable.
2. Showing or feeling restless eagerness to do something, go somewhere; overzealous, hasty.
3. Not patient; not bearing or enduring (pain, discomfort, opposition, etc.) with composure; lacking in endurance; irritable, irascible, easily provoked.
incompassionate:
Having no pity or compassion.
incompatible:
1. Not able to exist in harmony or agreement; not going or getting along well together; incongruous, discordant, conflicting, antagonistic, mismatched.
2. Mutually intolerant; incapable of existing together in the same subject; contrary or opposed in character; discordant, incongruous, inconsistent.
3. The incapacity of cells or tissue from one individual to tolerate those of some other individual when an organic union of some kind is formed between them, esp. in grafting and transplantation, in the transfusion of blood, and in parasitism.
Incompatibility is when a man wants a divorce and his wife doesn’t; or when the husband loses his income and the wife her patability.
—Evan Esar
In Genesis (the first book in the Bible) it says that it is not good for a man to be alone, but sometimes it is a great relief.
—John Barrymore
passible:
Capable of feeling, especially pain or suffering; susceptible to sensation.
passion:
A strong liking or desire for or devotion to some object, activity, or concept; extreme, compelling emotion; intense emotional drive or excitement; specifically: 1. Great anger, rage, or fury. 2. Enthusiasm or fondness for. 3. Strong love or affection; craze, mania. 4. Amorous feelings; strong sexual affection, sexual drive, or desire; love; lust. 5. Latin passio was chiefly a word used in Christian theology; when capitalized, Passion refers especially to the sufferings of Jesus Christ on the Cross (also it often includes His Agony in Gethsemane).
Asthma is a disease that has practically the same symptoms as passion, except that with asthma it lasts longer.
—Anonymous
passional:
Relating to or marked by passion; also, a book describing the sufferings of the martyrs.
passionate:
Having or showing strong feeling; full of passion; fervent, intense, ardent, earnest; including: 1. Easily angered; hot-tempered. 2. Resulting from, expressing, or tending to arouse strong feelings. 3. Implies great vehemence and often violence and wasteful dispersal of emotion.
passionless:
1. Without passion.
2. In medicine, painless, without suffering.
If we resist our passions, it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Passions are vices or virtues in their highest powers.
—Johann von Goethe
passive:
Influenced or acted upon without exerting influence or acting in return; offering no opposition or resistance; receiving or enduring without resistance; submissive; unassertive, compliant. Acted upon by an external agency; receptive to outside impressions or influences without resistance.
patience:
The capacity, habit, or fact of being calm and enduring pain, or affliction, with composure and without complaint; calm endurance, forbearance.
A lack of pep is often mistaken for patience.
—Ken Hubbard
Endurance is patience concentrated.
—Thomas Carlyle
He that can have patience can have what he will.
—Benjamin Franklin
Patience is power; with time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes silk.
—Chinese Proverb
If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.
—Hal Borland
Patience is a quality that is most needed when it is exhausted and it's also the
ability to do something else while waiting. Patience is the most important virtue to cultivate if you are always punctual.
—Evan Esar
Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.
—Laurence J. Peter
Nature, time, and patience are the three great physicians.
—Bulgarian proverb
patient:
Bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint; steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity. Calmly tolerating delay, confusion, inefficiency, etc. [Originally, patient, which comes from the Latin pati (to suffer), was applied to anyone who was under a doctor’s care because he was sick or injured; however, patient has long since come to mean anyone who is under a doctor's care—healthy or ill.
—Based on information from the Morris Dictionary of Word and
Phrase Origins by William and Mary Morris.
patripassion:
One who held, as certain early heretics, that God the Father suffered with or in the person of the Son for the redemption of man.
satispassion:
In religion, achieving atonement with an adequate degree of suffering.
self-compatible:
Used in botany to indicate a plant that can be fertilized by means of its own pollen.
uncompassionate:
Not sympathetic; unfeeling.
Quizzes
You may take a self-scoring quiz over some of the words in this section by just clicking on
Pass-, Pati- Quiz #1 to check your word knowledge.
You may take another second self-scoring quiz over some of the words in this section by just clicking on
Pass-, Pati- Quiz #2.