mercilessly

adverb

as in ruthlessly

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of mercilessly For the second year in a row, this quiet Hill Country town is digging itself out of a catastrophe that has mercilessly taken a community trying to heal and set them back on the path of mourning. — Alaa Elassar, CNN Money, 20 July 2026 An ensuing mob of fans trying to take the stadium shuttle to the Netherlands-Tunisia match got mercilessly down poured on. — Sophie Lindberg, Kansas City Star, 14 July 2026 All Harris needed was a 10-men England side to hold on as El Tri mercilessly delivered crosses into the box. — Fisher Isbell, AJC.com, 7 July 2026 It’s been blistering in New York City, with temperatures registering in the high 90s on successive days, then climbing to 100 degrees Thursday and mercilessly extending into the Fourth of July. — Roni Jacobson, New York Daily News, 5 July 2026 Swift was mercilessly dragged into court proceedings when Baldoni accused Lively of leveraging Swift to intimidate him during the shoot. — Marc Malkin, Variety, 2 July 2026 The second Test was all over rapidly and mercilessly on Sunday when Matt Henry took the remaining five wickets within the first hour to finish with 11 in the match. — Paul Newman, New York Times, 21 June 2026 Some commentators’ dark horses for the tournament, Norway qualified from Europe with a perfect record, pillaging goals at will, while mercilessly dispatching opponents. — Jonathan Thompson, Travel + Leisure, 10 June 2026 The parody would begin with Oteri's Gail Hailstorm, a riff on Courteney Cox's mercilessly ambitious reporter Gale Weathers in the Scream franchise. — Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly, 10 June 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for mercilessly
  1. ruthlessly
  2. unmercifully
  3. pitilessly
  4. heartlessly
  5. callously
  6. unsparingly
  7. brutally
  8. inhumanly
Adverb
  • This summer will not repeat the last, where 14 new players arrived at a cost of £170million ($228m) to ruthlessly overhaul a promotion-winning squad.
    — Philip Buckingham, New York Times, 22 July 2026
  • But when the swirl of events beyond their control caught them into something immeasurably larger than a single game of soccer, not even the strength of their new mentality was enough to prevent them from being ruthlessly swept away.
    — Mark Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor, 7 July 2026
Definition of ruthlessly
Adverb
  • Any party member who seeks to defy his wishes risks losing a seat, being unmercifully gaslit, or trashed on Truth Social.
    — Rob Crilly, The Washington Examiner, 22 May 2026
  • Now my son is dead after suffering unmercifully.
    — Rick Sobey, Boston Herald, 6 Feb. 2026
Definition of unmercifully
Adverb
  • The first hour, set at a resort that’s like a singles cruise through the Twilight Zone (or Bachelor in Paradise beamed in from a brutal alternate universe), contains some of the most pitilessly funny scenes of the filmmaker’s career.
    — A.A. Dowd, Vulture, 24 Oct. 2025
Definition of pitilessly
Adverb
  • Victim Nyron Shaw’s father said the driver who mowed his son down last year in Ocean Hill a day before Independence Day should face the maximum penalty for allegedly driving twice the speed limit and heartlessly taking off, leaving his son to die.
    — Nicholas Williams, New York Daily News, 8 Apr. 2026
  • In the process, Joel heartlessly killed some innocent people, including medical professionals.
    — EW.com, EW.com, 26 Aug. 2025
Definition of heartlessly
Adverb
  • The department was known to operate callously, firing people by email or locking them out of buildings.
    — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 10 June 2026
  • Altman accused of making ChatGPT unsafe The lawsuit joins prior suits accusing Altman of callously deploying AI systems without regard for user safety.
    — Ashley Belanger, ArsTechnica, 1 June 2026
Definition of callously
Adverb
  • Kahlo vibrantly and unsparingly depicted herself and events from her life, which was upended by a bus accident at 18.
    — Hannah Schoenbaum, Fortune, 24 Nov. 2025
  • The episode unsparingly examines cultural assumptions about race and colorism; similarly, HIM is a scathing critique of how professional sports capitalize upon the bodies and minds of Black athletes.
    — Neda Ulaby, NPR, 19 Sep. 2025
Definition of unsparingly
Adverb
  • But at the end of season 17, while Voit was in prison, he was brutally attacked.
    — Hedy Phillips, PEOPLE, 23 July 2026
  • When the Red Wings signed Mortiz Seider to this contract, his impacts in brutally tough minutes weren’t yet lining up with his reputation.
    — Dom Luszczyszyn, New York Times, 22 July 2026
Definition of brutally
Adverb
  • For her next project, she’s headed as far from there as humanly (or inhumanly) possible.
    — Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, 24 June 2026
Definition of inhumanly

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Cite this Entry

“Mercilessly.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/mercilessly. Accessed 27 Jul. 2026.

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