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
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According to the Sheriff’s Office, a judge released Cruz on his own recognizance June 4 following his arraignment on felony animal cruelty charges in Sacramento Superior Court.
-
At one point, the narrator, embarrassed by his own act of cruelty, gives a sobbing woman all his money and then leaves her alone in a hotel room.
Noun
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But it’s lost on these boys, whose youth has been ground away by the drug trade’s meaningless brutality.
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There is a weird intimacy to hand-to-hand combat and the brutality of it.
Cite this Entry
“Heartlessness.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/heartlessness. Accessed 3 Jul. 2026.
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