Reuth

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Archaic word for pity or compassion felt toward someone who is suffering or in distress
2. An old term for tender sympathy and sorrow felt on seeing another person's misfortune
3. Obsolete English noun meaning compassion, mercy, or sorrowful sympathy for another's hardship

Etymology: Old English "hrēow" meant sorrow, regret, or pity, and it is the ancestor of what "ruth" means today. The Middle English "reuth" was built on the same root as the verb "rue", which once meant to feel sorrow over something before it came to mean regretting it. The noun is essentially "the state of rueing", so a feeling of distress came first and the sense of compassion grew out of it. The word survived mainly through the Bible and older poetry, and its most productive descendant is the adjective "ruthless", meaning without pity. The "ruth" in the Book of Ruth is an unrelated Hebrew name. The herb "rue" is a homograph with no shared origin. It came into English from Latin "ruta", which was borrowed from the Greek "rhytē", so the plant and the feeling are only coincidentally spelled alike.

Synonyms: ruth, pity

Antonyms: cruelty