The story
- Latin · derived fromcrūdēlis“hard, severe, cruel”
- Old French · derived fromcruel
- Middle English · inherited fromcruel
- English todaycruel
From Middle English cruel, borrowed from Old French cruel, from Latin crūdēlis (“hard, severe, cruel”), akin to crūdus (“raw, crude”); see crude.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.