How to Use cruel in a Sentence

cruel

adjective

• Hunger is a cruel fact of nature.
• Of course, returning the cat at this point would be cruel.
  — John Hodgman, New York Times, 8 Sep. 2022
• So casually cruel, in the name of nothing at all — just for the hell of it.
  — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 2 Sep. 2022
• Nick Lowe and Shakespeare were wrong, about having to be cruel to be kind.
  — Chris Willman, Variety, 2 Sep. 2022
• The sport was very cruel in those decades, the sixties, the seventies and part of the eighties.
  — Jim Clash, Forbes, 18 Oct. 2024
• That’s life under the big black sun: cruel, beautiful, fast. – N.R.
  — Spin Staff, SPIN, 15 Aug. 2022
• Laws can be cruel, unjust and passed in order to spread fear and create scapegoats, scaring up a base of angry voters, united against a common enemy.
  — Rev. Brenda Walker, al, 7 Aug. 2022
• The group says that industrial milk production practices are cruel to cows and that many travelers are lactose intolerant.
  — Megan Cerullo, CBS News, 24 Oct. 2024
• Courts are finding that this is a violation of the Eighth Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
  — Taylor Wilson, USA TODAY, 14 Sep. 2022
• Trips could last for days; it wasn’t considered cruel and unusual punishment to include clubs residing in Maine, Virginia and Ohio in the same league.
  — Mitchell Nathanson, The Conversation, 5 Sep. 2022
• But history’s cruel lesson is that some democracies are valued more than others, which is why Armenia’s current mission is to dramatically boost its own worth.
  — Charlie Campbell / Yerevan, TIME, 22 Oct. 2024
• The measure passed Thursday is one of the cruelest yet.
  — Tori Otten, The New Republic, 4 May 2023
• As the clock winds down, Fenn might be in for a cruel summer.
  — Queenie Wong, Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2023
• The reality is, to go on the run with the child is cruel and not fair.
  — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 5 Mar. 2024
• The brides did indeed find a strange (and cruel) way of showing it.
  — R. Eric Thomas, The Denver Post, 3 Oct. 2024
• Online trolls told me the things my own brain was telling me at its cruelest.
  — Sarah Bence, Verywell Health, 8 July 2024
• The former is humble and kind, the latter is rich and cruel.
  — Jessica Roiz, Billboard, 6 Apr. 2023
• But the school’s photographer assigned me to the back row, next to the tallest boy in the class—such cruel fate!
  — Thessaly La Force, Vogue, 18 Jan. 2024
• To do that to a writer — or to anyone about their work — is cruel.
  — Laurie Hertzel, Chicago Tribune, 26 Nov. 2022
• Shih has a rich voice and a stillness in his manner that makes his cruel words linger.
  — Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Oct. 2023
• The rumors are terrible and cruel but this time, one of them was true.
  — Kelsie Gibson, Peoplemag, 10 Aug. 2023
• Gracie has a rather cruel habit of telling her teenage daughter that her arms are too fat.
  — Tom Gliatto, Peoplemag, 30 Nov. 2023
• These ghosts are old and young, cruel and playful, loved or unknown.
  — Hazlitt, 29 Nov. 2022
• Gay quickly chimed in, citing cruel names that the page has posted about her.
  — TIME, 24 Jan. 2024
• Life is cruel, all is vanity, the house always wins and the cosmic joke is on us.
  — Ty Burr, Washington Post, 27 June 2024
• The regime seemed oblivious to the irony that its own prisons were every bit as cruel.
  — Kian Tajbakhsh, The Atlantic, 1 Nov. 2022
• And, because boys can be cruel and girls can give glares, to some too natural.
  — Rembert Browne, Los Angeles Times, 11 Oct. 2022
• It's been one too many cruel summers since Taylor Swift last went on tour.
  — David Oliver, USA TODAY, 9 Mar. 2023
• And given the cruel injustice of Juneteenth, the last of those pioneers had to have been from Texas.
  — Mitchell S. Jackson, New York Times, 20 Dec. 2023
• As observers have pointed out, the comments were cruel to those who choose to not have children.
  — Faith Hill, The Atlantic, 8 Aug. 2024

Last Updated: 16 Nov 2024