From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Cruel \Cru"el\ (kr[udd]"[e^]l), noun See {Crewel}.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Cruel \Cru"el\ (kr[udd]"[e^]l), adjective [F. cruel, fr. L. crudelis, fr. crudus. See {Crude}.]
1. Disposed to give pain to others; willing or pleased to hurt, torment, or afflict; destitute of sympathetic kindness and pity; savage; inhuman; hard-hearted; merciless.
Behold a people cometh from the north country; . . . they are cruel and have no mercy. --Jer. vi. 22,23.
2. Causing, or fitted to cause, pain, grief, or misery.
Cruel wars, wasting the earth. --Milton.
Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath for it was cruel. --Gen. xlix. 7.
3. Attended with cruetly; painful; harsh.
You have seen cruel proof of this man's strength. --Shak.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
adjective
1: lacking or showing kindness or compassion or mercy [syn: {unkind}]
2: (of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering; "a barbarous crime"; "brutal beatings"; "cruel tortures"; "Stalin's roughshod treatment of the kulaks"; "a savage slap"; "vicious kicks" [syn: {barbarous}, {brutal}, {fell}, {roughshod}, {savage}, {vicious}]
3: (of weapons or instruments) causing suffering and pain; "brutal instruments of torture"; "cruel weapons of war" [syn: {brutal}]
4: used of circumstances (especially weather) that cause suffering; "brutal weather"; "northern winters can be cruel"; "a cruel world"; "a harsh climate"; "a rigorous climate"; "unkind winters" [syn: {brutal}, {harsh}, {rigorous}, {unkind}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
129 Moby Thesaurus words for "cruel": Draconian, Tartarean, acute, afflictive, agonizing, animal, anthropophagous, atrocious, barbaric, barbarous, beastly, bestial, biting, bloodthirsty, bloody, bloody-minded, bowelless, brutal, brutalized, brute, brutish, callous, cannibalistic, cold-blooded, cramping, cruel-hearted, cruise, cutthroat, demoniac, demoniacal, devilish, diabolic, diabolical, distressing, dog-eat-dog, excruciating, fare, fell, feral, ferocious, fiendish, fiendlike, fierce, flinty, gnawing, go, gory, grave, grim, griping, hard, harrowing, harsh, heartless, heinous, hellish, hie, homicidal, hurtful, hurting, implacable, inclement, inexorable, infernal, inhuman, inhumane, journey, merciless, monstrous, murderous, outrageous, painful, paroxysmal, pass, piercing, pitiless, poignant, proceed, pungent, push on, racking, red-handed, relentless, remorseless, repair, ruthless, sadistic, sanguinary, sanguineous, satanic, savage, self-destructive, severe, sharkish, sharp, shooting, slaughterous, slavering, spasmatic, spasmic, spasmodic, stabbing, stinging, subhuman, suicidal, tormenting, torturous, travel, truculent, unchristian, uncivilized, uncompassionate, uncompassioned, unfeeling, unforgiving, unhuman, unkind, unmerciful, unpitiful, unpitying, unremorseful, unsparing, unsympathetic, unsympathizing, unyielding, vicious, wend, without mercy, wolfish
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