Cruel
English
Adjective
Cruel (comparative crueler or crueller, superlative cruelest or cruellest)
- 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.
- (slang) Cool; awesome; neat.
Verb
Cruel (third-person singular simple present cruels, present participle cruelling, simple past and past participle cruelled)
Synonyms for Cruel
brutal, sadistic, vicious, barbarous, merciless, ferocious, savage, inhuman, pitiless, cold-blooded, harsh.
Antonyms for Cruel
merciful, kind, considerate, feeling, gentle, compassionate, charitable.
Derived terms
Related terms
Thesaurus
Draconian, Tartarean, acute, afflictive, agonizing, animal, anthropophagous, atrocious, barbaric, barbarous, beastly, bestial, biting, bloodthirsty, bloody, bloody-minded, bowelless, brutal, brutalized, brute, brutish, callous, cannibalistic, cold-blooded, cramping, cruel-hearted, cruise, cutthroat, demoniac, demoniacal, devilish, diabolic, diabolical, distressing, dog-eat-dog, excruciating, fare, fell, feral, ferocious, fiendish, fiendlike, fierce, flinty, gnawing, go, gory, grave, grim, griping, hard, harrowing, harsh, heartless, heinous, hellish, hie, homicidal, hurtful, hurting, implacable, inclement, inexorable, infernal, inhuman, inhumane, journey, merciless, monstrous, murderous, outrageous, painful, paroxysmal, pass, piercing, pitiless, poignant, proceed, pungent, push on, racking, red-handed, relentless, remorseless, repair, ruthless, sadistic, sanguinary, sanguineous, satanic, savage, self-destructive, severe, sharkish, sharp, shooting, slaughterous, slavering, spasmatic, spasmic, spasmodic, stabbing, stinging, subhuman, suicidal, tormenting, torturous, travel, truculent, unchristian, uncivilized, uncompassionate, uncompassioned, unfeeling, unforgiving, unhuman, unkind, unmerciful, unpitiful, unpitying, unremorseful, unsparing, unsympathetic, unsympathizing, unyielding, vicious, wend, without mercy, wolfish
Etymology
Middle English < Old French < Latin crūdēlis (“hard, severe, cruel”), akin to crūdus (“raw, crude”); see crude.
Pronunciation
Translations
Adjective
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External links
- Cruel in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
- Cruel in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
Anagrams
French
Pronunciation
Adjective
Cruel m. (f. cruelle, m. plural Cruels, f. plural cruelles)
Synonyms
Related terms
Anagrams
Middle English
Adjective
Cruel
