cruel

Etymology 1

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

adj

1. Intentionally causing or reveling in pain and suffering; merciless, heartless.
   The supervisor was very cruel to Josh, as he would always give Josh the hardest, most degrading work he could find.
2. Harsh; severe.
   He was physically the toughest of us and wore five layers of polar clothing, but the cold was cruel and wore us down hour after hour. 2013, Ranulph Fiennes, Cold: Extreme Adventures at the Lowest Temperatures on Earth
   You may be sure they watched the cliffs on their left eagerly for any sign of a break or any place where they could climb them; but those cliffs remained cruel. 1951, C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia
3. (slang) Cool; awesome; neat.

adv

1. (nonstandard) To a great degree; terribly.
   'I've never got arthritis, though my old dad had it something cruel.' 2016, Kerry Greenwood, Murder and Mendelssohn, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 219

verb

1. (chiefly Australia, New Zealand) To spoil or ruin (one's chance of success)
   What cruelled him was that Imperial Hotel contract. 1937, Vance Palmer, Legend for Sanderson, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, page 226
   He was on the fringes of Test selection last year before a shoulder injury cruelled his chances. 1 April 2014, The Sydney Morning Herald
   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. 8 September 2015, The Age
2. (Australia, transitive, intransitive) To violently provoke (a child) in the belief that this will make them more assertive.
   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. 2007, Stewart Motha, “Reconciliation as Domination”, in Scott Veitch, editor, Law and the Politics of Reconciliation, Routledge, published 2016, page 83
   2009, Mark Colvin, ABC, "Peter Sutton discusses the politics of suffering in Aboriginal communities," 2 July, 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2615274.htm […] 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.

Etymology 2

noun

1. Alternative form of crewel