What's the difference between cruel and cruelty?

Cruel


Definition:

  • (n.) See Crewel.
  • (a.) Disposed to give pain to others; willing or pleased to hurt, torment, or afflict; destitute of sympathetic kindness and pity; savage; inhuman; hard-hearted; merciless.
  • (a.) Causing, or fitted to cause, pain, grief, or misery.
  • (a.) Attended with cruetly; painful; harsh.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) China’s new law also restricts the right of media to report on details of terror attacks, including a provision that media and social media cannot report on details of terror activities that might lead to imitation, nor show scenes that are “cruel and inhuman”.
  • (2) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
  • (3) It goes on: "In a reality of ongoing occupation, of solid cynicism and meanness, each and every one of us bears the moral obligation to try to relieve the suffering, do something to bend back the occupation's giant, cruel hand."
  • (4) At one point, Walters speculates that “she looks the same weight as the Duchess – about 8st”; later, he disingenuously asks her to discuss “the cruel comments about being a ‘childless spinster’”, neither telling readers who made those “cruel comments” in the first place, or where.
  • (5) More here: UK regulator urges banks to speed up swaps mis-selling compensation 8.40am GMT More reaction to the decision to send riot police to evict people from the offices of Greece's former state broadcaster this morning , starting with journalist Nick Malkoutzis: Nick Malkoutzis (@NickMalkoutzis) 5 mths after flicking switch on public broadcaster ERT, gov't tries to settle issue by sending riot police to remove remaining staff #Greece November 7, 2013 Nick Malkoutzis (@NickMalkoutzis) While #ERT will be off air for good after police intervention, the stain of how its closure has been handled won't wash away easily #Greece November 7, 2013 Lady Mondegreen (@amaenad) Like a mean stupid dog appeasing a cruel master, the Greek government wants to lay ERT's limp body at the troika's feet.
  • (6) The government confirmed on Tuesday that the second year of the cull had begun, sparking outrage from animal rights activists, campaigners and opposition politicians who claim it is cruel and ineffective.
  • (7) Her friends have been arrested and subjected to what they describe as cruel and inhumane treatment .
  • (8) The jury decided unanimously Thursday that the Colorado attack was cruel enough to justify the death penalty .
  • (9) One of its board members is retired Major General Andrew James “Jim” Molan, co-architect of Tony Abbott’s “Operation Sovereign Borders,” the draconian program relying on the remote island detention centres condemned as cruel and inhumane by multiple respected human rights organisations.
  • (10) MOAB map “Isis were so cruel to us,” said Ahmad.
  • (11) Philip French championed Boyle's career from the outset, describing his debut feature film, Shallow Grave , as "a good piece of storytelling... Hitchcock would have admired its ruthlessness and cruel humour."
  • (12) S an Francisco is now a cruel place and a divided one.
  • (13) In a rather florid letter with classical, literary and historical references, he told her: "You, I already know from happy experience, will not be cruel to my tender flame … As I think of you I shall learn to love you more.
  • (14) Of course the timing was cruel, aimed at throwing the prime minister off balance just before what turned out to be a fairly successful Commons question time.
  • (15) He could be very charming, he could be very cruel, but he mattered and he put something together that was extraordinary."
  • (16) One of the first demands is that the bombardments by the regime and its [Russian] backers must end.” Merkel condemned the air raids on Syria’s second city as “inhumane and cruel”.
  • (17) While Liverpool seemed stretched by cruel successive away fixtures, Chelsea arguably mustered some of their finest attacking football of the campaign through that ferocious opening period.
  • (18) If you follow Twitter regularly, it's easy to believe that many of our fellow citizens are cruel, mean, misogynist and foul-mouthed.
  • (19) We perceive the circumstances of our youth as normal and unexceptional, however sparse or cruel they may be.
  • (20) "It's outrageous and cruel that people are taken off to detention and the families hear nothing until the body shows up with signs of abuse," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

Cruelty


Definition:

  • (n.) The attribute or quality of being cruel; a disposition to give unnecessary pain or suffering to others; inhumanity; barbarity.
  • (n.) A cruel and barbarous deed; inhuman treatment; the act of willfully causing unnecessary pain.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Solzhenitsyn was acknowledged as a "truth-teller" and a witness to the cruelties of Stalinism of unusual power and eloquence.
  • (2) Butler was convicted of grevious bodily harm and child cruelty, and sentenced to prison.
  • (3) So it was with cruelty – the same cruelty seen in the enactment of the Muslim travel ban and the gamble with the healthcare of 24 million people – that Trump signed an executive order to begin construction immediately .
  • (4) She believes her explorations – of their vanities, their blindnesses, their cruelties, of the brief moments in which they attain goodness, or glimpse a kind of realistic, unselfish love – to be of urgent importance.
  • (5) The FN has made political capital about cruelty to animals in the preparation of halal and kosher meat in the past, and its MEPs are preparing a resolution that would limit shale gas exploration, despite the party voting against a shale moratorium in the last parliament.
  • (6) In 2005, four years after Adam's body was found, two women and a man were convicted of child cruelty for torturing and threatening to kill an orphaned refugee who they claimed was a witch.
  • (7) Strong objections to certain features of this system have not only been raised by national and international societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals but also by ethologists.
  • (8) Finally, Sybil Burton gave in, claiming cruelty and that her husband was "in the constant company of another woman," which Newsweek called "the throwaway line of the decade".
  • (9) His mother, devoted and stoic, read aloud the sad, true stories of cruelty and passion between the wars contained in his father's briefs for the divorce court.
  • (10) The heads of the World Health Organisation, Unicef, the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme and the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, urged political leaders to use their influence to solve the crisis and criticised what they described as "an insufficient sense of urgency among the governments and parties that could put a stop to the cruelty and carnage in Syria".
  • (11) Why does the sight, or even the mere thought, of the obese excite such venom, disgust and outright cruelty?
  • (12) Those who doubted football's capacity for cruelty ought to have been on hand in Paris - much in the manner that Thierry Henry was for France .
  • (13) She served either as a director or council member of the Conservation Society, Soil Association, Animal Defence Society, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Society for the Protection of Animals.
  • (14) They are not motivated by cruelty but by a powerful desire to push the frontiers of medical research and develop therapies for debilitating diseases.
  • (15) Labour now wants to own this mantle of macho, to keep the momentum of cruelty going in the name of responsibility, But lets get real.
  • (16) It predicts: "As these conflicts and crises grow ever more intense, and as the ruling elite continues with impunity to crush and to strip away the rights of citizens to freedom, to property, and to the pursuit of happiness, we see the powerless in our society – the vulnerable groups, the people who have been suppressed and monitored, who have suffered cruelty and even torture, and who have had no adequate avenues for their protests, no courts to hear their pleas -– becoming more militant and raising the possibility of a violent conflict of disastrous proportions.
  • (17) Jennie Gray was sentenced to 42 months in jail for child cruelty and for her part in the cover-up, while Butler was also handed a five-year sentence for child cruelty over a series of untreated injuries in the weeks and months before her death.
  • (18) Liberal and Labor have moved close together on cruelty to refugees to cutting funding to universities and on increasing coal exports, so I am not in the least bit surprised you’ve got this collusion,” she said.
  • (19) Would people bring their children to SeaWorld if they knew the cruelty behind the orca whale circus show?
  • (20) Recognition of unacceptable cruelty to animals in pasttimes such as bull-baiting, dates in Britain from the early 19th century.