tenderness
Americannoun
Explanation
Tenderness is a feeling of concern, gentle affection, or warmth. It's the quality of a person who cries when they see someone get hurt or who gently picks up a tiny kitten. Writing a heartfelt note to a sad friend is one way to show tenderness, and so is giving your brother a sincere hug on his birthday. Another definition of this adjective is "extreme sensitivity to pain." You might experience tenderness in your muscles the day after going on a long hike. This is actually the original meaning, from tender, "soft or easily injured," and a root meaning "stretched, thin, or weak."
Vocabulary lists containing tenderness
Novel Study: The Crucible, Acts 3–4
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Crenshaw
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The Suffix -ness, Part 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Conductors rebalance its transparency and weight; singers rediscover its tenderness and brutality, comedy and terror; directors offer new political, psychological, economic and environmental readings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
But she concluded: "Today I have reached the end-point of my distress... I am so in need of a shoulder, a support, a tenderness, a presence – which you are incapable of giving."
From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2026
“It’s got all this tension, but it’s also got tenderness and regret,” he says of the script.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 21, 2026
But that reality is too often used to establish a tenderness around criticism of the Black art that does manage to come down the pipeline.
From Salon ● Oct. 19, 2026
The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender.
From "Every Day" by David Levithan
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
