Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Disposed to inflict pain or suffering.
- adj. Causing suffering; painful.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Disposed to inflict suffering, physical or mental; indifferent to or taking pleasure in the pain or distress of any sentient being; willing or pleased to torment, vex, or afflict; destitute of pity, compassion, or kindness; hard-hearted; pitiless.
- Proceeding from or exhibiting indifference to or pleasure in the suffering of others; causing pain, grief, or distress; performed or exerted in tormenting, vexing, or afflicting: as, a cruel act; a cruel disposition; the cruel treatment of animals.
- Synonyms Barbarous, savage, ferocious, brutal, merciless, unmerciful, pitiless, unfeeling, fell, ruthless, truculent, bloodthirsty, inexorable, unrelenting.
- Very; extremely.
Wiktionary
- adj. Not nice; mean; heartless.
- adj. slang Cool; awesome; neat.
- v. To spoil or ruin (one's chance of success)
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. See crewel.
- adj. Disposed to give pain to others; willing or pleased to hurt, torment, or afflict; destitute of sympathetic kindness and pity; savage; inhuman; hard-hearted; merciless.
- adj. Causing, or fitted to cause, pain, grief, or misery.
- adj. Attended with cruetly; painful; harsh.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. (of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Old French, from Latin crūdēlis ("hard, severe, cruel"), akin to crūdus ("raw, crude"); see crude. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, from Latin crūdēlis. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Mamma! what a cruel, _cruel_ wretch!" cried Walter.”
“Godo --" she began; and she cast herself on the lounge that Maxwell had vacated, and plunged her face in the pillow and sobbed, "Oh, cruel, cruel, _cruel_!”
“Whoever assigned eight A.M. for Molecular Biology 201 gave new meaning to the term cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Obama employs the word cruel and its derivatives no fewer than fourteen times in Dreams.”
“The term cruel includes the concept of intent - an intention to inflict pain and/or suffering.”
Evolution Weekend to focus on environment - The Panda's Thumb
“He said: The word cruel has been used and I think it's fair.”
“The video was recorded in an undercover investigation at Conklin Dairy Farms Inc., said Mercy For Animals, a not-for-profit group that publicizes what it calls cruel practices in the dairy, meat and egg industries and promotes a vegan diet.”
“Mr. Worthington has written a book, The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, in which he takes the position that Guantánamo is part of what he describes as a cruel and misguided response by the Bush administration to the September 11 attacks.”
Isabel Macdonald: A Double Standard on Reporters Who Express Opinions?
“They ran it nearly naked, in the undies, to protest what they call the cruel treatment of animals.”
“Animal rights activists have been boycotting P&G for several years because of what it calls cruel practices in laboratory experiments involving animals.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cruel’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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Describing People
eye, hair, mouth, nose, tooth, head, face, arm, hand, finger, lip, leg and 212 more...
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Cool sounding words
Stuff that either rolls off the tongue really well or sounds interesting.
suppurate, inveterate, douche, Constantinople, zyzygy, polyglot, serendipitous, vivisection, solypsis, conflagration, instupituous, fecundity and 52 more...
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Character Traits
This is a list of adjectives used by writers to help develop characters.
guileful, obsessed, brilliant, bright, naive, streetwise, streetsmart, ruthless, cruel, foolish, obsessive, introspective and 19 more...
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Mr. Pronunciation's Bad Day
Mr. Pronunciation is an upstanding and reliable sort of dude. He's like the Clark Kent of the pronunciation world. Sometimes, though, he botches up a pronunciation and, you know, he's in a hurry an...
colonel, treacle, cruel, laissez faire, poo, stupid, sashay, concrete, birthmark, chic, draught, gaur and 11 more...
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What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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strangelyrouge's Words
glockenspiel, gewgaw, jetsam, flotsam, gripe, grab, wench, whilst, betwixt, hither, thither, yonder and 1034 more...
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kingofbash's Words
bash, poleaxed, salacious, libertine, charlatan, aplomb, fortuitous, finagle, apoplectic, debutante, carte blanche, aardvark and 472 more...
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Apples to Apples: Green Cards
A complete list of the green cards (adjectives) from the popular word game.
absurd, addictive, adorable, aged, American, ancient, animated, annoying, appetizing, arrogant, awesome, awkward and 237 more...
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theastic's Words
cellar, stalemate, wrought, opal, tyrant, squelch, squab, linen, tartan, paisley, scope, siren and 395 more...
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Allographic Homophones
Words that can be pronounced identically but are spelled differently. I've started with unusual or extensive sets. In some of these sets, no one speaker would pronounce them all the same. I've trie...
air, are, ayr, ayre, e'er, ere, err, eyre, heir, apatite, appetite, picnic and 226 more...
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dyy's Words
ambivalence, irony, double-edged sword, paradox, struggle, plunge, buoy, pigeon-hole, ultimately, status quo, fuel, undermine and 230 more...
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Coruscatingly what?
List of adjectival terms, from aggressive to zippered, paired in printed materials with the adverb coruscatingly, identified by a simple query to Google Search (Books).
...propaedeutic...aggressive, angry, articulate, astringent, aware, beautiful, big, blinding, bright, brilliant, brutal, cerebral and 93 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
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feeling words
twitterpated, loquacious, ambiguous, pensive, sluggish, anxious, adventurous, curious, abandoned, absent-minded, abrasive, abused and 653 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cruel.
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