Word of the Day

: February 10, 2024

callous

adjective KAL-us

What It Means

Someone or something described as callous does not feel or show any concern about the problems or suffering of other people.

// Several employees cringed at the callous remark their supervisor made about the team's performance.

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callous in Context

"The tragedy of AI is not that it stands to replace good journalists but that it takes every gross, callous move made by management to degrade the production of content—and promises to accelerate it." — Brian Merchant, The Los Angeles Times, 1 Dec. 2023

Did You Know?

A callus is a hard, thickened area of skin that develops usually from friction or irritation over time. Such a hardened area often leaves one less sensitive to the touch, so it's no surprise that the adjective callous, in addition to describing skin that is hard and thick, can also be used as a synonym for harsh or insensitive. Both callus and callous come via Middle English from Latin. The figurative sense of callous entered English almost 300 years after the literal sense, and Robert Louis Stevenson used it aptly when he wrote in Treasure Island "But, indeed, from what I saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea they sailed on."