cruelty

plural cruelties · alternative obsolete cruellty · alternative obsolete cruelltie

1. uncountableAn indifference to suffering or pleasure in inflicting suffering.

   YSL, as he is often called, is equally capable of casual, aristocratic cruelty and earthy, spontaneous tenderness, and when you study his face it can be hard to distinguish boredom from rapture.

   2015 May 7, A. O. Scott, “Review: ‘Saint Laurent,’ Beautiful People, High Fashion and Career at Its Pinnacle”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 18 Sep 2019

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   Fear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty into the crew. One captain, to strike terror into the rest, killed a slave and dividing heart, liver and entrails into 300 pieces made each of the slaves eat one, threatening those who refused with the same torture. Such incidents were not rare.

   1963, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd Revised edition, page 9

   Synonyms: mercilessness, barbarism, ruthlessness · Antonyms: mercy, clemency

2. countableA cruel act.

   Gay songwriter behind bars! Needs sincere letter to help ease the tension from cruelties inside the joint.

   1980 December 27, Walter Williams, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 23, page 15

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   The Begums' ministers, on the contrary, to extort from them the disclosure of the place which concealed the treasures, were, […] after being fettered and imprisoned, led out on to a scaffold, and this array of terrours proving unavailing, the meek tempered Middleton, as a dernier resort, menaced them with a confinement in the fortress of Chunargar. Thus, my lords, was a British garrison made the climax of cruelties!

   1788 June, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Mr. Sheridan’s Speech, on Summing Up the Evidence on the Second, or Begum Charge against Warren Hastings, Esq., Delivered before the High Court of Parliament, June 1788”, in Select Speeches, Forensick and Parliamentary, with Prefatory Remarks by N[athaniel] Chapman, M.D., volume I, [Philadelphia, Pa.]: Published by Hopkins and Earle, no. 170, Market Street, published 1808, →OCLC, page 474