heartless
Americanadjective
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unfeeling; unkind; unsympathetic; harsh; cruel.
heartless words; a heartless ruler.
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Archaic. lacking courage or enthusiasm; spiritless; disheartened.
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of heartless
1300–50; Middle English herteles, Old English heortlēas. See heart, -less
Explanation
Someone who's heartless is inconsiderate and insensitive to other people's feelings. It would be heartless to smash a little kid's carefully carved Jack o' lantern. A heartless person might respond glibly to a friend's sad story about his sick grandmother, or push a hungry cat out the door on a rainy night. If you're heartless, you're cold and uncaring. Another, older meaning of this adjective is "lacking courage," from the Old English heortleas, "dispirited or dejected." The modern meaning was coined by poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816.
Vocabulary lists containing heartless
"The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet," Vocabulary from Act 1
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"The Clever Old Woman" and "Argument"
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Adventures of Don Quixote
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Her death made him reclusive and heartless, accelerating his loss of faith in humanity.
From Salon ● Jun. 13, 2026
The barber chair, the locus of Sweeney’s revenge on the heartless cruelty of a Victorian London that wrecked his life, isn’t the elaborate contraption of other productions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2026
The story is rudimentary: Elongated blue cat people prepare for a gigantic battle with the nasty, militarized, heartless, corporation-backed human colonists, or “sky people.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 17, 2025
Staff working for a scandal-hit NHS trust allegedly made "heartless" criticisms about families involved in the largest-ever maternity review and claimed relatives are taking part so they can seek compensation.
From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2025
Spliced into the news stories, sound-bited, they always came off as brutal, heartless.
From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
