as in ruthless
not guided by or showing a concern for what is right
cutthroat business practices intended to drive competitors out of business
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in assassin
a person who kills another person
while traveling the ancient Silk Road, traders were constant prey to cutthroats and thieves
Synonyms & Similar Words
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of cutthroat
Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly, 25 May 2026
Empowering field centers A major theme in the letter is giving field centers more opportunities to focus on their core capabilities instead of competing in a cutthroat environment for resources.
—Beth Mole, ArsTechnica, 22 May 2026
Brett Milano, Boston Herald, 10 Apr. 2026
Which makes streamers going all-in on profits right now look like a cutthroat but ultimately shrewd move.
—Jennifer Silverman, Rolling Stone, 7 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for cutthroat
Adjective
More accolades followed, as Wyatt's steamy Bold entrance on a 2013 episode (being spied naked in an outdoor shower by Kim Matula's Hope Logan) announced a major new player in the soap's setting in the cutthroat Los Angeles fashion industry.
—Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly, 25 May 2026
Empowering field centers A major theme in the letter is giving field centers more opportunities to focus on their core capabilities instead of competing in a cutthroat environment for resources.
—Beth Mole, ArsTechnica, 22 May 2026
Noun
There’s a fellow from Rolling Stone who apologized to me a couple years ago, he was told to be as cutthroat as possible.
—Brett Milano, Boston Herald, 10 Apr. 2026
Which makes streamers going all-in on profits right now look like a cutthroat but ultimately shrewd move.
—Jennifer Silverman, Rolling Stone, 7 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for cutthroat
Recent Examples of Synonyms for cutthroat
Adjective
-
Serenity Maggie’s (and Sweet Magnolias‘) trip to New York was cut short as Season 5 offered a juxtaposition between small-town values and ruthless big-city corporate culture.—
Nellie Andreeva,
Deadline,
11 June 2026
-
Ruffalo will voice Nero, a scrappy black cat, and Fishburne will play Rocco, a ruthless cat mob boss.—
Jordan Moreau,
Variety,
11 June 2026
Noun
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The bombshells, Gabriel from Brazil and Kayda from New Hampshire, arrive like sexy assassins and silently start making out with everyone standing on a red dot.—
Kathleen Walsh,
Vulture,
3 June 2026
-
His legacy as one of rap’s great subliminal assassins is one of the most impressive parts of his career.—
Jayson Buford,
Rolling Stone,
3 June 2026
Adjective
-
Similarly, having a conscience means feeling sadness or moral repulsion at the idea of taking a certain action, and those emotions entail a physiological response, a remnant of having once felt sick with guilt after committing an immoral act.—
Ted Chiang,
The Atlantic,
3 June 2026
-
Ryan Josue Rojas, 20, of Herriman, Utah, was arraigned Sunday on one count of accosting a minor for immoral purposes, Michigan State Police said.—
Joseph Buczek,
CBS News,
1 June 2026
Noun
-
Any justice in the community would praise this murderer’s row of craftspeople working on the production design for the period town setting; makeup, especially Pennywise’s horrible face; sound design, for helping to keep the audio terrors churning along; and the costume work.—
William Earl,
Variety,
11 June 2026
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That year, even major characters and first-person narrators wound up dead, killed by strangers or friends or family members, often by parents, or serial murderers, or in accidents, usually right at the end at the story, no warning.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
10 June 2026
Adjective
-
Fujimori is linked to the authoritarian and corrupt legacy of the government of her late father, Alberto Fujimori, in the 1990s.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
7 June 2026
-
Of course, all of this convenient acquiescence will sound familiar in the United States, where our own Congress and Department of Justice have been nothing if not servile to a brazenly corrupt executive.—
Daniel Alarcón,
New Yorker,
4 June 2026
Noun
-
In her follow-up, Blanche, Dorothy, Rose and Sophia attend a fancy party on an island estate; when the host turns up dead, Blanche becomes a suspect, leaving the women with no choice but to find the real killer.—
Michael Schaub,
Oc Register,
11 June 2026
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Season 4 focused on the search for a missing Navajo girl, which takes Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito from the safety of the Navajo Nation to the gritty terrain of 1970s Los Angeles in a race against the clock to save her from an obsessive killer with ties to organized crime.—
Rosy Cordero,
Deadline,
11 June 2026
Adjective
-
Some unscrupulous mortgage loan originator might want to push the borrower toward FHA financing.—
Jeff Lazerson,
Oc Register,
28 May 2026
-
Connecticut gets a bad reputation This leads to the 1833 story of the unscrupulous Connecticut peddlers.—
Ava Berger,
NPR,
28 May 2026
Adjective
-
Practically all the public’s attention has been on the president and his oddball or vengeful or unprincipled actions.—
Los Angeles Times,
Los Angeles Times,
12 Apr. 2026
-
How pathetically far this blithering, unprincipled piece of trash has gone to endanger other lives, to expressly distract and deflect from his own wicked deeds, and to further benefit his grifting family’s larcenously enlarged bounties.—
Voice of the People,
New York Daily News,
8 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Cutthroat.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/cutthroat. Accessed 13 Jun. 2026.
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