cruelとは

語源 1

From Middle English, borrowed from Old French cruel, from Latin crūdēlis (“hard, severe, cruel”), akin to crūdus (“raw, crude”); see crude.

形容詞

cruel (comparative crueler または crueller または more cruel, superlative cruelest または cruellest または most cruel)

1. Not nice; mean; heartless.

   The supervisor was very cruel to Josh, as he would always give Josh the hardest, most degrading work he could find.

2. (slang) Cool; awesome; neat.

使用する際の注意点

The word has metaphorical uses, for example "The cliffs remained cruel." (i.e. unclimbable when they desperately needed to be climbed) in The Lord of the Rings.

同意語

• brutal
• sadistic
• vicious

反意語

• merciful

派生語

• cruelly

関連する語

• crude
• crudeness
• cruelty

副詞

cruel (not comparable)

1. (nonstandard) To a great degree; terribly.
   • 2016, Kerry Greenwood, Murder and Mendelssohn, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 219:

     'I've never got arthritis, though my old dad had it something cruel.'

動詞

cruel (三人称単数 現在形 cruels, 現在分詞 cruelling, 過去形および過去分詞形 cruelled)

1. (chiefly Australia, New Zealand) To spoil or ruin (one's chance of success)
   • 1937, Vance Palmer, Legend for Sanderson, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, p. 226, [1]

     What cruelled him was that Imperial Hotel contract.

   • 2014, The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 April, 2014, [2]

     He was on the fringes of Test selection last year before a shoulder injury cruelled his chances.

   • 2015, The Age, 8 September, 2015, [3]

     A shortage of berth space for mega container ships will restrict capacity at Melbourne's port, cruelling Labor's attempts to get maximum value from its privatisation, a leading shipping expert has warned.

2. (Australia, transitive, intransitive) To violently provoke (a child) in the belief that this will make them more assertive.
   • 2007, Stewart Motha, "Reconciliation as Domination" in Scott Veitch (ed.), Law and the Politics of Reconciliation, Routledge, 2016, p. 83, [4]

     Violence is apparently introduced early by the practice of "cruelling": children even in their first months are physically punished and then encouraged to seek retribution by punishing the punisher.

   • 2009, Mark Colvin, ABC, "Peter Sutton discusses the politics of suffering in Aboriginal communities," 2 July, 2009, [5]

     […] I was referring to the area where you were talking about this practice of cruelling; the pinching of babies, sometimes so hard that their skin breaks and may go septic.

名詞

cruel (countable かつ uncountable, 複数形 cruels)

1. Alternative form of crewel

Further reading

• cruel in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• cruel in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

アナグラム

• lucre, ulcer