penitent
She penitently confessed to the crime.
His eyes were fixed penitently on his boots.
Kelly penitently asked forgiveness.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Making & accepting apologies
amends
apologetically
apologize
atone for something
atonement
beg
bury
bygone
conciliatory
crawl
crawl back (to someone)idiom
forge ahead
forgive
penance
resolve your differences
shred
sink your differencesidiom
solatium
sorry to bother you
soz

Examples of penitently

penitently
The abbe bowed penitently, and with tears in his eyes.
From Project Gutenberg
The boys were there before her, penitently exhibiting the ruined cord and promising to do so no more.
From Project Gutenberg
In the awkward silence that followed, the hands of the two brothers sought and grasped each other, penitently.
From Project Gutenberg
He backed his chair penitently as he made that entreaty.
From Project Gutenberg
I penitently resolved to be more considerate toward his infirmities of mind and body during the remainder of my visit.
From Project Gutenberg
Perhaps, the listener thought penitently, she herself was weeping because she had no faith.
From Project Gutenberg
Or was she penitently striving to make amends for the unmerited harshness she had dealt him?
From Project Gutenberg
Should she put him in jail and then come and weep penitently?
From Project Gutenberg
As though at a confessional, she lifted her hands penitently.
From Project Gutenberg
But he spoke now in a very faint treble indeed, and looked penitently at the cards.
From Project Gutenberg
Her vein of romance was imbedded in a rock of good sense, and she took the implied reproof penitently.
From Project Gutenberg
She understood then the hurt they had carried away with them and hoped penitently that each had found the comfort and love he had craved.
From Project Gutenberg
He half rose and looked at her penitently, and with something like shame for his vehemence.
From Project Gutenberg
Something seemed to tell him that later, in a foreign land, he would remember it lovingly and penitently.
From Project Gutenberg
So, tossing away from the star inquiry, turning penitently back to it, the young form fought out the thing.
From Project Gutenberg
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.