Synonyms of heartlessness

heartlessness

noun

as in cruelty

disposition to willfully inflict pain and suffering on others

the gung ho heartlessness with which the secret police tortured prisoners was beyond belief

Synonyms & Similar Words

• cruelty
• brutality
• atrocity
• inhumanity
• savagery
• barbarity
• sadism
• cruelness
• savageness
• viciousness
• murderousness
• fiendishness
• truculence
• ruthlessness
• barbarousness
• wantonness
• inhumanness
• mercilessness
• atrociousness
• pitilessness
• meanness
• ferocity
• oppressiveness
• grimness
• hard-heartedness
• ferociousness
• bloodthirstiness
• malevolence
• spitefulness
• fierceness
• maliciousness
• hatefulness
• malignity
• bloodlust
• unfeelingness
• sanguinity
• harshness
• heavy-handedness
• sanguineness
• nastiness
• cattiness
• despitefulness
• fellness
• hardhandedness

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• sympathy
• compassion
• kindness
• humanity
• humaneness
• benignity
• tenderness
• warmth
• tenderheartedness
• kindheartedness
• good-heartedness
• warmness
• pity
• mercy
• leniency
• clemency
• warmheartedness
• mercifulness
• charitableness

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of heartlessness

These young graduates start out naive about the heartlessness of the corporate world and harbor illusory hopes for success in unforgiving professions. — George Packer, The Atlantic, 16 Mar. 2026

The lives of the two children in the story, aged fourteen and four, are portrayed as being as fleeting as the fireflies, and the story is an unsentimental and unflinching account with moments of both tenderness and heartlessness. — Ginny Tapley Takemori september 4, Literary Hub, 4 Sep. 2025