CRUELLY

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Excessively

Example:

a cruelly bitter winter

Classified under:

Adverbs

Sense 2

Meaning:

With cruelty

Example:

he treated his students cruelly

Classified under:

Adverbs

Pertainym:

cruel ((of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering)

Credits

Context examples:

I was confined to my room, terrorised by the most horrible threats, cruelly ill-used to break my spirit—see this stab on my shoulder and the bruises from end to end of my arms—and a gag was thrust into my mouth on the one occasion when I tried to call from the window.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In the mean time I was not able to forbear groaning and shedding tears, and turning my head towards my sides; letting him know, as well as I could, how cruelly I was hurt by the pressure of his thumb and finger.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her nature to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence; however carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please her, my efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

How cruelly I have misjudged him!

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You must not think my visit all friendly and disinterested, Trotwood, for—I am afraid I may be cruelly prejudiced—I do not like to let papa go away alone, with him.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

“Pray do, my dear Miss Lucas,” she added in a melancholy tone, “for nobody is on my side, nobody takes part with me. I am cruelly used, nobody feels for my poor nerves.”

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Everything else was unchanged, the sun still shining mercilessly on the steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain, and I could scarce persuade myself that murder had been actually done and a human life cruelly cut short a moment since before my eyes.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Hunters there are who fail to return to the camp, and hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found with throats slashed cruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the snow greater than the prints of any wolf.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

There had, in fact, been so much of message, of allusion, of recollection, so much of Mansfield in every letter, that Fanny could not but suppose it meant for him to hear; and to find herself forced into a purpose of that kind, compelled into a correspondence which was bringing her the addresses of the man she did not love, and obliging her to administer to the adverse passion of the man she did, was cruelly mortifying.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

“You have been cruelly used,” said Holmes.