as in ruthless
having or showing a lack of sympathy or tender feelings
gave the beggar in the street a pitiless look and kept on walking
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Recent Examples of pitiless
Biel is a pitiless cokehead who, we’re told, later marries a senator and has four kids.
—
Ky Henderson,
Rolling Stone,
15 Feb. 2026
In his experiences and chronicles of the great ideological battles of the twentieth century, Curzio Malaparte was a shape-shifter—pitiless, clinical, cynical, unsentimental, indifferent to morality and idealism.
—
Leah Downey,
The New York Review of Books,
7 Feb. 2026
Told together, the overlapping stories deal with issues of mental illness, lives of quiet desperation, and the pitiless march of time.
—
David Morgan,
CBS News,
29 Jan. 2026
Facing Russia’s pitiless attacks in Ukraine and a White House seemingly hungry for quick, rather than just, peace, Europe’s lifeboat for Ukraine – one clawed back from the jaws of division and delay – promises an emboldened friend to Kyiv in the uncertain months ahead.
—
Clare Sebastian,
CNN Money,
19 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for pitiless
Ky Henderson,
Rolling Stone,
15 Feb. 2026
In his experiences and chronicles of the great ideological battles of the twentieth century, Curzio Malaparte was a shape-shifter—pitiless, clinical, cynical, unsentimental, indifferent to morality and idealism.
—
Leah Downey,
The New York Review of Books,
7 Feb. 2026
Told together, the overlapping stories deal with issues of mental illness, lives of quiet desperation, and the pitiless march of time.
—
David Morgan,
CBS News,
29 Jan. 2026
Facing Russia’s pitiless attacks in Ukraine and a White House seemingly hungry for quick, rather than just, peace, Europe’s lifeboat for Ukraine – one clawed back from the jaws of division and delay – promises an emboldened friend to Kyiv in the uncertain months ahead.
—
Clare Sebastian,
CNN Money,
19 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for pitiless
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pitiless
Adjective
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Canadian quartet Truck Violence have been sloshing together these subgenres in a ruthless manner for several years now, and their sophomore album and debut for the Flenser aims for even higher drops between those peaks and valleys.
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There was relative peace for 11 years, until a second civil war erupted in 1983, when leaders in Khartoum imposed sharia (Islamic) law and accelerated repression of the southern Christian rebels, which ultimately allowed a ruthless military officer, Omar al-Bashir, to come to power in 1989.
Adjective
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The poem that precedes it, the Iliad, is a cruel and beautiful work, the ultimate story of war; the Odyssey has its warlike passages, but its central energies seem almost commonplace beside the merciless fury of Achilles.
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Humility is the posture; the standard is merciless.
Adjective
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Oscar Wilde, for example, reposes beneath a hulking deity whose iconoclastic castration, back in 1961, did little to restrain pilgrims seeking to smear red lips across his stony physique.
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Instead of looking like a sleek urban loft, the room can quickly start to feel cold, stony, and impersonal.
Cite this Entry
“Pitiless.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pitiless. Accessed 27 Jun. 2026.
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