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or suffering to others; inhumanity; barbarity. Pierced through the heart with your stern cruelty. Shak.

Enormous wickedness; extreme heinousness or cruelty.

proceedings from, daring effrontery or contempt of law, morality, or decorum. "Audacious cruelty." "Audacious prate." Shak.

Cruelty; ferociousness; inhumanity. Treating Christians with a barbarity which would have shocked the very Moslem. Macaulay.

Characterized by sharpness, severity, or cruelty; harsh; stern; virulent; as, bitter reproach. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Col. iii. 19.

Disposition to shed blood; bloodthirstiness. All that bloodiness and savage cruelty which was in our nature. Holland.

Attended with, or involving, bloodshed; sanguinary; esp., marked by great slaughter or cruelty; as, a bloody battle.

A slaughterer; one who kills in large numbers, or with unusual cruelty; one who causes needless loss of life, as in battle. "Butcher of an innocent child." Shak. Butcher bird (Zoöl.), a species of shrike of the genus Lanius.

The act or practice of eating human flesh by mankind. Hence; Murderous cruelty; barbarity. Berke.

or talons, in the act of grasping firmly; -- often figuratively, for power, rapacity, or cruelty; as, to fall into the clutches of an adversary. I must have . . . little care of myself, if I ever more come near the clutches of such a giant. Bp. Stillingfleet.

d woman in supposed sexual relationship. That the duty of cohabitation is released by the cruelty of one of the parties is admitted. Lord Stowell.

nt parts of the United States; -- called also Paducahs. They are noted for plundering and cruelty.

Cruelty. [Obs.] Spenser.

ble ruler or sovereign. Irresponsible power in human hands so naturally leads to it, that cruelty has become associated with despot and tyrant. C. J. Smith.

remely unpleasant to the moral taste or higher sensibilities of our nature; as, an act of cruelty may excite disgust. The manner of doing is more consequence than the thing done, and upon that depends the satisfaction or disgust wherewith it is received. Locke. In a vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited o…

title, species, and the like. Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good. Shak. Is it a great cruelty to expel from our abode the enemy of our peace, or even the doubtful friend [i. e., one as to whose sincerity there may be doubts] Bancroft.

Harshness; cruelty. Cockeram.

all time; always; forever. He shall ever love, and always be The subject of by scorn and cruelty. Dryder.

Remote from purpose; contrary to design or wishes; as, far be it from me to justify cruelty.

Fierce; savage; wild; indicating cruelty; ravenous; rapacious; as, ferocious look or features; a ferocious lion. The humbled power of a ferocious enemy. Lowth.