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.
"It's like when the first snows come. It's a tenderness, but there's a rawness to it as well."
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
I don’t think I would be who I was if I didn’t show some tenderness towards those spaces that made me, or at least allowed me to see myself.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
Beatty says James Taylor in “Sweet Baby James” was the first voice he tried to emulate when he was young, and that folky tenderness is definitely still in there.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 24, 2026
The 99-year-old artist—long excluded from the mainstream, male-dominated art scene in Mexico, and who only had her first major retrospective last year—is a quiet yet forceful fount of tenderness.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026
Harsh talk from one in whom the springs of tenderness gushed abundant, as I knew.
From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya
Definitions 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.
