kindness

To be the embodiment of a particular trait (stated between "be" and "itself"). My mom is just kindness itself—she's always willing to help anyone in need.

To do a favor or something nice for one. Hey, do me a kindness and take these bags into the kitchen while I get the others from the car.

To harm, inconvenience, or bother one by treating them with excessive favor or kindness. The phrase originated as the expression "kill with kindness as fond apes do their young," referring to the notion that such animals sometimes crushed their offspring by hugging them too hard. I love talking to Grandma, but she calls me twice a day to see how I'm doing—right now she's killing me with kindness.

proverb If you treat someone kindly, they will likely reciprocate in a similar fashion. Maybe you should be nicer to Arthur if you want him to treat you better. Kindness begets kindness, you know. When I was a barista, it made my day when people would pay it forward. Kindness really begets kindness.

Because of one's altruistic generosity or goodwill, without personal or ulterior motivations. You expect me to believe you would do this out of the kindness of your heart? Come on, what are you looking for in return?

An innate sense of compassion. The phrase comes from Shakespeare's Macbeth. Lisa would never say anything that cruel—she has the milk of human kindness in her.

to do a kind deed for a person. My neighbor did me a kindness when he cut my grass. I am always happy to have the opportunity of doing someone a kindness.

Fig. to be enormously kind to someone. You are just killing me with kindness. Why? Don't kill them with kindness.

Fig. natural kindness and sympathy shown to others. (From Shakespeare's play Macbeth, I. v.) Mary is completely hard and selfish—she doesn't have the milk of human kindness in her. Roger is too full of the milk of human kindness and people take advantage of him.

Overwhelm or harm someone with mistaken or excessive benevolence. For example, Aunt Mary constantly sends Jane chocolates and cake and other goodies, even though she's been told Jane's on a diet-nothing like killing with kindness . This expression originated as kill with kindness as fond apes do their young (presumably crushing them to death in a hug) and was a proverb by the mid-1500s.

Compassion, sympathy, as in There's no milk of human kindness in that girl-she's totally selfish. This expression was invented by Shakespeare in Macbeth (1:5), where Lady Macbeth complains that her husband "is too full of the milk of human kindness" to kill his rivals.

If you kill someone with kindness, you treat them too kindly when this is not what they need or want. `He is killing me with kindness,' Sallie says. `He's just too attentive.'

A form of self-deception. The phrase comes from Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), in which Blanche DuBois, with delusions of grandeur, has a destructive effect on her sister Stella’s marriage to Stanley Kowalski. Stanley rapes her, leading to her nervous breakdown, and commits her to a mental hospital. As the doctor leads her off, she says, “Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” The phrase “kindness of strangers” occasionally appears in other contexts, as in “With no rain for a month, my garden depends on the kindness of strangers.” Sue Miller used it in her novel The Lake Shore Limited (2010). Talking about two characters in her play, the playwright said: “Well, you are not Jay . . . a guy who’s betraying his wife. And I’m not Elena. I’m not . . . dependent upon the kindness of strangers.”

To overwhelm with benevolence. The original saying was “to kill with kindness as fond apes do their young,” conjuring up the image of a large simian crushing its baby to death with too vigorous a hug. It appeared as a proverb in the mid-sixteenth century and was quoted in numerous sources thereafter. A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse is the title of one of Thomas Heywood’s best-known plays (1607). It was surely a cliché by the time Byron wrote (Letters and Journals, 1815), “Don’t let them kill you with claret and kindness.”

Sympathy, compassion. This expression, too, comes from Shakespeare. He used it in Macbeth (1.5), where Lady Macbeth tells her husband, “Yet do I fear thy nature. It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness” (to act as ruthlessly as he must in order to become king). Numerous writers have used the term, often to comment on the souring or curdling of that very milk, although one writer reports of one bishop meeting another and saying, “He had often heard of the milk of human kindness, but never hitherto had he met the cow” (E. M. Sneyd-Kynnersley, H.M.I., 1908).

Compassion or benevolence. Shakespeare again, but this time Macbeth. Lady Macbeth regrets that her husband doesn't have the overwhelming ambition that she has by saying, “Yet do I fear thy nature, It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness. To catch the nearest way.” Macbeth heeds his wife, schemes and murders his way to the throne, and is then deposed and killed. The milk must have curdled. A compliment to a sweetheart of a person is to say that he or she is “full of the milk of human kindness.”