unkindliness

noun

Definition of unkindlinessnext
as in cruelty

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Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for unkindliness
  1. cruelty
  2. inhumanity
  3. savagery
  4. heartlessness
  5. barbarity
  6. brutishness
  7. callousness
  8. savageness
Noun
  • Christopher Stefanou of Long Island is charged with animal cruelty and breaking rules about shark fishing, Cape & Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois said Wednesday.
    — Neal Riley, CBS News, 21 Oct. 2026
  • Florida House Bill 559 recently created new guidelines to address animal cruelty across the state, including by allowing municipalities to increase fines and penalties.
    — Joshua Ceballos, Miami Herald, 20 Oct. 2026
Definition of cruelty
Noun
  • The brutality and inhumanity that white Americans inflicted on free and enslaved Black people drove them out.
    — Karen Masterson, The Conversation, 5 Oct. 2026
  • This is pure hatred, and condemning this kind of inhumanity shouldn’t be hard.
    — Christopher Keating, Hartford Courant, 3 June 2026
Definition of inhumanity
Noun
  • The poem’s anguished meditations on love’s savagery and isolation are designed to draw blood.
    — Merve Emre, New Yorker, 21 Oct. 2026
  • In a culture that refuses to accept its responsibilities, its complicities, we are all reduced, in some essential measure, to a state of savagery.
    — David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct. 2026
Definition of savagery
Noun
  • 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
Definition of heartlessness
Noun
  • The Soviets and their allies might have sophisticated weaponry and boundless barbarity.
    — Scott Simon, NPR, 24 Oct. 2026
  • What wasn’t new was the continuation of the kind of barbarity that dominated conflicts of recent memory, from Cambodia to Rwanda.
    — David Friend, Vanity Fair, 10 Sep. 2026
Definition of barbarity
Noun
  • Generations of agents, therefore, have had to walk a line between bookishness and brutishness.
    — Dan Piepenbring, Harpers Magazine, 24 Mar. 2026
  • But the brutishness has merely relocated, to places far more dangerous.
    — Ian Buruma, New Yorker, 23 Feb. 2026
Definition of brutishness
Noun
  • The boys’ callousness quickly turned to disgust, their contempt steadily aimed at Neil.
    — S. M. Reznik, New Yorker, 19 Oct. 2026
  • Vicki brushes it off, and even Shannon can’t defend her friend’s callousness.
    — Louis Peitzman, Vulture, 11 Sep. 2026
Definition of callousness
Noun
  • Government should tame the savageness of man and make life in this world more gentle, not crueler.
    — Eleanor Dearman, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 14 May 2026
Definition of savageness
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.

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Cite this Entry

“Unkindliness.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/unkindliness. Accessed 27 Oct. 2026.

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