What does cruel mean?

Definitions for cruel
ˈkru əlcru·el

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word cruel.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. barbarous, brutal, cruel, fell, roughshod, savage, viciousadjective

    (of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering

    "a barbarous crime"; "brutal beatings"; "cruel tortures"; "Stalin's roughshod treatment of the kulaks"; "a savage slap"; "vicious kicks"

Wiktionary

  1. cruelverb

    To spoil or ruin (one's chance of success)

  2. crueladjective

    Not nice; mean; heartless.

    The supervisor was very cruel to Josh, as he would always give Josh the hardest, most degrading work he could find.

  3. crueladjective

    Cool; awesome; neat.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

  1. CRUELadjective

    Etymology: cruel, French; crudelis, Latin.

    If wolves had at thy gate howl’d that stern time,
    Thou should’st have said, Go, porter, turn the key;
    All cruel’s else subscrib’d. William Shakespeare, King Lear.

    If thou art that cruel god, whose eyes
    Delight in blood, and human sacrifice. John Dryden, Ind. Emp.

    Consider mine enemies; for they are many, and they hate me with cruel hatred. Ps. xxv. 19.

    We beheld one of the cruelest fights between two knights, that ever hath adorned the most martial story. Philip Sidney, b. ii.

Wikipedia

  1. Cruel

    Cruelty is the pleasure in inflicting suffering or inaction towards another's suffering when a clear remedy is readily available. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept. Cruel ways of inflicting suffering may involve violence, but affirmative violence is not necessary for an act to be cruel. For example, if a person is drowning and begging for help and another person is able to help with no cost or risk, but is merely watching with disinterest or perhaps mischievous amusement, that person is being cruel—rather than violent. George Eliot stated that "cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside itself; it only requires opportunity." Bertrand Russell stated that "the infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell." Gilbert K. Chesterton stated that "cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kind of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty."The word has metaphorical uses, for example, "The cliffs remained cruel." (i.e., unclimbable when they desperately needed to be climbed) in The Lord of the Rings.

ChatGPT

  1. cruel

    Cruel refers to behavior or actions that show a lack of empathy, compassion, or kindness towards others, resulting in intentional or unnecessary harm, suffering, or mistreatment inflicted upon them.

Webster Dictionary

  1. Cruelnoun

    see Crewel

  2. Crueladjective

    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

  3. Crueladjective

    causing, or fitted to cause, pain, grief, or misery

  4. Crueladjective

    attended with cruetly; painful; harsh

  5. Etymology: [F. cruel, fr. L. crudelis, fr. crudus. See Crude.]

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary

  1. Cruel

    krōō′el, adj. disposed to inflict pain, or pleased at suffering: void of pity, merciless, savage: severe.—adj. Cru′el-heart′ed, delighting in cruelty: hard-hearted: unrelenting.—adv. Cru′elly.—ns. Cru′elness (obs.); Cru′elty. [Fr. cruel—L. crudelis.]

Surnames Frequency by Census Records

  1. CRUEL

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Cruel is ranked #61899 in terms of the most common surnames in America.

    The Cruel surname appeared 324 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 0 would have the surname Cruel.

    64.2% or 208 total occurrences were Black.
    22.2% or 72 total occurrences were of Hispanic origin.
    5.8% or 19 total occurrences were Asian.
    5.2% or 17 total occurrences were White.

British National Corpus

  1. Adjectives Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'cruel' in Adjectives Frequency: #780

Anagrams for cruel »

  1. ulcer

  2. lucre

How to pronounce cruel?

How to say cruel in sign language?

Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of cruel in Chaldean Numerology is: 1

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of cruel in Pythagorean Numerology is: 5

Examples of cruel in a Sentence

  1. Blake Lively:

    It’s a cruel and unusual form of torture, and then my daughter goes, ‘Dada!’ and she starts hugging and kissing the screen and waving at him, and he’s not waving back and she doesn’t understand why he’s not waving back. She thinks it’s like FaceTime. And it’s because Daddy’s getting it.

  2. Richard Dawkins:

    Nature is not cruel, pitilessly, indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous -- indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.

  3. Karine Jean-Pierre:

    What they are doing is an illegal stunt, is a political stunt. And it's really just disrespectful to humanity. It doesn't afford them any dignity, what they're doing when you are abandoning families and children in a place where they were told they were going to get housing, it is just cruel, and it's not about the process. Actually, It's about a political tool or political stunt that they're moving forward with.

  4. Ali Jafari:

    The system is so difficult already, to make it tighter is just cruel.

  5. Panchatantra:

    The wife of bad conduct?constantly pleased with quarrelling?she is known by wise men to be cruel Old Age in the form of a wife.

Popularity rank by frequency of use

cruel#10000#11289#100000

Translations for cruel

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"cruel." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Mar. 2024. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/cruel>.

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