cruel-hearted

See also: cruelhearted

English

Adjective

cruel-hearted (comparative more cruel-hearted or (rare) crueler-hearted, superlative most cruel-hearted or (rare) cruelest-hearted)

1. Cruel; lacking kindness and compassion.
   • c. 1590–1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii], page 25, column 1:

     I thinke Crab my dog, be the ſowreſt natured dogge that liues: My Mother weeping: my Father wayling: my Siſter crying: our Maid howling: our Catte wringing her hands, and all our houſe in a great perplexitie, yet did not this cruell-hearted Curre ſhedde one teare: he is a ſtone, a very pibble ſtone, and has no more pitty in him then a dogge: […]

   • 1868 November 14, “The Poet’s Wife”, in Harper’s Weekly. A Journal of Civilization., volume XII, number 620, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, page 722, column 1:

     Leave hold of my hand. I’m not crying: / And if ever I were, John, what then? / Would my tears not prove you had acted / Like the cruelest-hearted of men?

   • 1895 July 4, “Millionaire Senator. Senator Wm. Stewart, of Nevada, Is in It to Swim. Stewart in Kentucky. He Is Interviewed on Silver—Measures and Men—He Talks Out in Meeting—A Brai[n]y Man Who Made Money.”, in Press and Carolinian, volume 26, number 27, Hickory, N.C., page 6, column 2:

     Said he [William M. Stewart]: “John Sherman is the wickedest man ever born of woman, and Grover Cleveland is the coldest and cruelest-hearted human of this age. Sherman went to London in 1867 and deliberately sold the United States out to the Rothschilds, and has been their agent ever since. He is the brains of the Cleveland Administration, with Carlisle as the intermediary between him and the President. […]”

   • 1901 August – 1902 April, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, in The Hound of the Baskervilles: Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, London: George Newnes, […], published 1902, →OCLC, pages 332–333:

     Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is for ever buried.

   • 1909 October 26, “Can You Beat This”, in The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, volume XXXIV, number 351, Richmond, Ind., page seven, column 5:

     Although he provided his wife with a tent for a home during the winter, and the mud floor was saoked^[sic] most of the time, yet the cruelest-hearted man in Wayne county censured his wife because she did not keep their abade in good condition.

   • 1952 April 13, William McDonald, “Today ‘Barnes Boys’ Are Legion—Positivism Of Mister Elly Helped Educator Build One Of South’s Finest Boys’ Schools”, in The Montgomery Advertiser, 124th year, number 15, Montgomery, Ala., page ten—C, column 3:

     Mothers descended en masse on the school, beseeching Mr. Elly to release their boys from peril. “I told them that their boys were free to leave, but that an unexcused absence would be marked against them. They called me the cruelest-hearted man they had ever known.”

   • 1992, Julie Garwood, The Secret, →ISBN, page 132:

     She's cruel-hearted, Judith. Every chance she gets, she makes horrid remarks about the pain I'm going to have to endure.

Derived terms

• cruel-heartedly
• cruel-heartedness