tender-hearted

tender-hearted (comparative more tender-hearted or tenderer-hearted, superlative most tender-hearted or tenderest-hearted)

1. Alternative form of tenderhearted.
   • 1850 October 20, Frederick W[illiam] Robertson, “Triumph over Hindrances.—Zaccheus.”, in Sermons, Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton, […], 1st series, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1857, →OCLC, pages 98–99:

     Besides this, most of us must have remarked that a certain harshness of manner is contracted by those who have the rule over the poor. They come in contact with human souls only in the way of business. They have to do with their ignorance, their stupidity, their attempts to deceive; and hence the tenderest-hearted men become impatient and apparently unfeeling.

   • 1887, Thomas Nelson Page, “Polly. A Christmas Recollection.”, in In Ole Virginia; or, Marse Chan and Other Stories, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 194:

     But they never could induce her to shoot at anything except a mark. She was the tenderest-hearted little thing in the world.

   • 1941, Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →ISBN, page 130:

     […] Brother Bob, as I was telling you, ran away to sea; and, so they say, became Emperor of the Indies; where the very stones are emeralds and the sheep-crop rubies. Which, for a tenderer-hearted man never lived, he would have brought back with him, Sir, to mend the family fortunes, Sir.