Cruelty

How to spell cruelty

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce cruelty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cruelty mean?

1. nounBehaviour that deliberately causes pain or suffering to a person or animal.

Cruelty in a sentence

• The documentary exposed the cruelty inflicted on factory-farmed animals.

• The charity campaigns against cruelty towards household pets.

Where does cruelty come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin crudelitas, meaning 'harshness' or 'severity', which was built on the adjective crudelis, 'cruel' or 'hard-hearted'. That adjective is related to crudus, meaning 'raw' or 'bloody', and ultimately to a root sense of unprocessed flesh, so the early flavour of the word carried the idea of someone unfeeling enough to draw blood. English took it in during the 1200s through Old French, where it appeared as cruelté, and the modern spelling keeps the bare adjective 'cruel' visible at the front. The same crudus root gives us 'crude' and 'crudités', the raw vegetables served as a starter. The spelling trap is that the smooth-sounding ending tempts writers to insert an extra vowel and produce 'cruelity', when in fact you simply add -ty straight onto 'cruel'.

How the word is built

• cruel (from Latin crudelis: hard-hearted)
• -ty (noun suffix forming a quality or state)