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say it: MUR-see
mercy is a noun meaning "leniency and compassion shown toward offenders by a person or agency charged with administering justice". It is pronounced /ˈmɝsi/ — MUR-see. It carries 5 recorded senses.
leniency and compassion shown toward offenders by a person or agency charged with administering justice
“he threw himself on the mercy of the court”
a disposition to be kind and forgiving
“in those days a wife had to depend on the mercifulness of her husband”
the feeling that motivates compassion
alleviation of distress; showing great kindness toward the distressed
“distributing food and clothing to the flood victims was an act of mercy”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for mercy come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.