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
- heartlessly adverb
- heartlessness noun
Etymology
Origin of heartless
1300–50; Middle English herteles, Old English heortlēas. See heart, -less
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.
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
“It’s just a pretty heartless place and always has been,” says Ebert.
From Los Angeles Times
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.”
It was the iced-over, heartless feeling that enables some people to do terrible things for what they believe are perfectly justifiable reasons.
From Literature
The caricature of corporate America is heartless indifference, but Paul Gigot and Rupert Murdoch were there for my family and me.
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.
