Meanings
plural Cruellas
- colloquialA cruel, despicable, or otherwise unpleasant woman.
This is not to say that I’m advocating using negativity to make others miserable. (No one likes a Cruella.)
2017, Deanna K Willmon, Negatively Ever After: A Skeptic’s Guide to Finding Happiness, Berkeley, Calif.: She Writes Press, →ISBN4 more examples
But I am left to wonder, what kind of a government, what kind of a Cruella, could cut retirement benefits to a group of Eskimos in their eighties, in the dead of an Alaskan winter, and say: Sorry, there is nothing we can do.
2009 January 22, Congressional Record, volume 155, part 1, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, page 1403, column 2One person may be a refined aristocrat in a social setting, and switch to a Cruella at the steering wheel. If you believe you are in good shape and find yourself snapping at others with less power than yourself, watch out, as your emotional stability may only be a façade.
2010, Gabriela Cora, ExecutiveHealth.com’s Leading Under Pressure: Strategies to Avoid Burnout, Increase Energy, and Improve Your Well-Being, Pompton Plains, N.J.: Career Press, →ISBN, pages 109–110Ari immediately liked this woman he had heard about for more than a year. She didn’t seem like a Cruella at all.
2014, Charles Decker, Gene Ference, Priceless: Beyond Customer Care to Customer Delight, Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, →ISBNThere are Cruellas out there and should any new recruits have the misfortune to meet a Cruella in the workplace then this resource would give you information of some behaviours and actions that you would encounter since the core natures of criminal and corporate psychopaths are the same.
2023, Teresa A. Deygoo, “Moving Forward”, in A Corporate Psychopath: Tactics Used to Destroy Good Workers, Altona, Man.: FriesenPress, →ISBN, page 131
Origin
After the fictional character Cruella de Vil (a pun on the words cruel and devil); from cruel + -a (forming female names).
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
Cruella. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Cruella
“Cruella.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Cruella. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Cruella,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Cruella.
Source: Cruella on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.