cruel-heartedness

See also: cruelheartedness

English

Alternative forms

• cruelheartedness

Etymology

cruel-hearted +‎ -ness

Noun

cruel-heartedness (uncountable)

1. The quality of being cruel-hearted; lack of compassion and kindness.
   • 1855, Herman Melville, The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids:

     More tragical and more inscrutably mysterious than any mystic sight, human or machine, throughout the factory, was the strange innocence of cruel-heartedness in this usage-hardened boy.