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
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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
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
Recent Examples of Synonyms for heartlessness
Noun
-
Her staging of Schiaparelli’s work exposes illusion, cost, and cruelty.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
11 May 2026
-
That’s the charm and cruelty of the NBA Draft Lottery.—
C.J. Holmes,
New York Daily News,
8 May 2026
Noun
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This includes re-enshrining, codifying and strengthening our inalienable rights in the United States and abolishing ICE to ensure immigration and the struggle of migrants is treated as a civilian one, requiring support instead of brutality and criminalization.—
Lucas Robinson,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
7 May 2026
-
Although their relationship begins as a love story, the book brings home the profits of Jacob’s earlier brutality—fate catches up to him, and everything that is love and passion sort of spoils into wrath and obsession.—
The New Yorker,
New Yorker,
6 May 2026
Cite this Entry
“Heartlessness.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/heartlessness. Accessed 14 May. 2026.
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