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tenderness

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From tender +‎ -ness.

Pronunciation

Noun

tenderness (countable and uncountable, plural tendernesses)

  1. A tendency to express warm, compassionate feelings.
    When the lovers were together, their cold indifference gave way to love and tenderness.
    • 1853, Charlotte Brontë, Villette:
      I had known him jealous, suspicious; I had seen about him certain tendernesses, fitfulnesses—a softness which came like a warm air, and a ruth which passed like early dew, dried in the heat of his irritabilities: this was all I had seen.
    • 1980, Diana Ross, “Tenderness”, in Diana (album):
      Love me, try to be understanding / Tenderness is all that I'm asking / Don't feel like I'm making conditions / I want to overcome my inhibitions
  2. A concern for the feelings or welfare of others.
    When they saw the poor orphans, they were overwhelmed with tenderness for them.
    Everybody needs a little tenderness sometimes.
    • 1906, Violet Hunt, The Workaday Woman, page 1:
      Quiet people too, for I think that about this time a sort of remorseful tenderness comes over the bullies and the nagsters, so that they go about gently and deprecatingly, hoping by one day's record sweetness to outface the year's blusterings.
  3. (medicine, pathology) A pain or discomfort when an affected area is touched.
    He noted her extreme tenderness when he touched the bruise on her thigh.
    • 2023 July 21, Amanda Musa, “The FDA approved the US’ first over-the-counter birth control pill. What happens next?”, in CNN‎:
      Amies Oelschlager said in a statement that oral contraceptives that contain estrogen may cause side effects such as headaches, nausea, and breast tenderness.

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