Synonyms for cruelty
ˈkru əl ticru·el·ty

English Synonyms and AntonymsRate these synonyms:4.0 / 2 votes

1. cruelty

   Synonyms:
   hardness, harshness, implacability, justice, penalty, punishment, revenge, rigor, severity, sternness, vengeance

   Antonyms:
   benevolence, benignity, blessing, clemency, compassion, favor, forbearance, forgiveness, gentleness, grace, kindness, lenience, leniency, lenity, mercy, mildness, pardon, pardon, pity, tenderness

Princeton's WordNetRate these synonyms:0.0 / 0 votes

1. cruelty, inhuman treatmentnoun

   a cruel act; a deliberate infliction of pain and suffering

   Synonyms:
   pitilessness, inhuman treatment, harshness, cruelness, ruthlessness, mercilessness

2. cruelty, mercilessness, pitilessness, ruthlessnessnoun

   feelings of extreme heartlessness

   Synonyms:
   harshness, unmercifulness, pitilessness, mercilessness, ruthlessness, cruelness, inhuman treatment

3. cruelty, cruelness, harshnessnoun

   the quality of being cruel and causing tension or annoyance

   Synonyms:
   mercilessness, rigor, pitilessness, inclemency, roughness, hardness, ruthlessness, scratchiness, stiffness, harshness, cruelness, severeness, rigorousness, inhuman treatment, abrasiveness, severity, rigourousness, rigour

Matched Categories

1. • Heartlessness
   • Malevolence
   • Maltreatment

Dictionary of English SynonymesRate these synonyms:0.0 / 0 votes

1. crueltynoun

   Synonyms:
   inhumanity, barbarity, brutality, brutishness, ferocity, savageness truculence, blood-thirstiness

PPDB, the paraphrase databaseRate these paraphrases:0.0 / 0 votes

1. List of paraphrases for "cruelty":

   ruthlessness, cruel, barbarity, inhumanity, brutality, wickedness, meanness, atrocity, savagery, ferocity

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How to use cruelty in a sentence?

1. Jonathan Greenblatt:

   Well, Whoopi, there’s no question that the Holocaust was about race. That’s how the Nazis saw it as they perpetrated the systematic annihilation of the Jewish people across continents, across countries with deliberate and ruthless cruelty, you see, Hitler’s ideology, the Third Reich, was predicated on the idea that the Aryans, the Germans, were a ‘master race,’ and the Jews were a subhuman race. It was racialized antisemitism.

2. Joseph Conrad:

   The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.

3. Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic:

   Britney Spears testified under oath about James Spears cruelty and toxic presence in Britney Spears life, there’s a mountain of evidence mandating James Spears suspension.

4. Bertrand Russell:

   The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell.

5. Thomas Paine:

   This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.