Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or quality of being heartless; want of affection or of courage.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The characteristic of being heartless.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an absence of concern for the welfare of others

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word heartlessness.

Examples

  • As a matter of fact, what you call heartlessness is sheer broad-mindedness on my part.

    The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories 1910

  • Specs were lowered, true, but the reason that the Conservative Party were able to attend to immediate need, did not lie in heartlessness.

    Tax Rises For One Nation Is A Good Deal Newmania 2008

  • The death had left no regret upon her; it only gave her for a while a graver shadow over the brilliancy of her youth and of her beauty, and gave her for always -- or for so long, at least, as she chose to use it -- a plea for that indifference to men's worship of her which their sex called heartlessness; which her own sex thought an ultra-refined coquetry; and which was, in real truth, neither the one nor the other, but simply the negligence of a woman very difficult to touch, and, as it had seemed, impossible to charm.

    Under Two Flags 1839-1908 Ouida 1873

  • This kind of heartlessness and arrogance is par for the course for this banking goliath where, it seems, money is the deity at whose altar JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns executives regularly prostrate themselves.

    Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: JP Morgan Chase Lectures America on the Sanctity of Contracts 2010

  • This kind of heartlessness and arrogance is par for the course for this banking goliath where, it seems, money is the deity at whose altar JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns executives regularly prostrate themselves.

    JP Morgan Chase Lectures America on the Sanctity of Contracts 2010

  • This kind of heartlessness and arrogance is par for the course for this banking goliath where, it seems, money is the deity at whose altar JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns executives regularly prostrate themselves.

    Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: JP Morgan Chase Lectures America on the Sanctity of Contracts Rabbi Shmuley Boteach 2010

  • But that's just the kind of heartlessness conservative Republicans are known for.

    Althouse Derangement Syndrome. Ann Althouse 2007

  • To read this decision otherwise in order to accuse Roberts and, presumably, in all fairness, Henderson and Williams of some kind of heartlessness is really over the top.

    Balkinization 2005

  • Page 3 guardianship; by persisting in sin, they develope a heartlessness which is "nigh unto cursing."

    It is a fearful thing to live, Andrew 1900

  • What kind of heartlessness was this, to talk of permitting a stranger to do the most sacred offices of love?

    The Second Generation David Graham Phillips 1889

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.