How to Use cruel in a Sentence

cruel

adjective

• Hunger is a cruel fact of nature.
• 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
• It’s the cruel racist joke that still hangs above the Statehouse door.
  — al, 16 Feb. 2022
• The reality is, to go on the run with the child is cruel and not fair.
  — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 5 Mar. 2024
• But no more cruel than denying him for the past 35 years.
  — Greg Cote, Miami Herald, 4 Mar. 2025
• The sport was very cruel in those decades, the sixties, the seventies and part of the eighties.
  — Jim Clash, Forbes, 18 Oct. 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
• Fame has its burdens, some of which can be cruel to the psyche.
  — Robin Givhan, Washington Post, 24 May 2022
• Of course, returning the cat at this point would be cruel.
  — John Hodgman, New York Times, 8 Sep. 2022
• Shahana Goswami plays the lead role of a widow who lands the job of a cop due to life’s cruel twists.
  — Sweta Kaushal, Forbes, 6 Jan. 2025
• 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
• Nick Lowe and Shakespeare were wrong, about having to be cruel to be kind.
  — Chris Willman, Variety, 2 Sep. 2022
• The rumors are terrible and cruel but this time, one of them was true.
  — Kelsie Gibson, Peoplemag, 10 Aug. 2023
• Rights groups have been outraged over the hijab law and the cruel ways it is enforced.
  — Artemis Moshtaghian and Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN, 5 Mar. 2025
• But that doesn’t mean that the balmier Aurica won’t be cruel to a lot of species.
  — Stav Dimitropoulos, Popular Mechanics, 25 May 2022
• So casually cruel, in the name of nothing at all — just for the hell of it.
  — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 2 Sep. 2022
• Gracie has a rather cruel habit of telling her teenage daughter that her arms are too fat.
  — Tom Gliatto, Peoplemag, 30 Nov. 2023
• None of it was cruel, and the skit was carefully rehearsed.
  — Marc Myers, WSJ, 1 Feb. 2022
• These ghosts are old and young, cruel and playful, loved or unknown.
  — Hazlitt, 29 Nov. 2022
• But Oz was born to take every cheap shot presented by the cruelest of fates.
  — Andy Andersen, Vulture, 3 Nov. 2024
• This is cruel and defies the core tenets of the world’s second-largest religion.
  — Amina J. Mohammed and Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, WSJ, 11 Nov. 2021
• The fashion world, in which the streets outside the shows, and the parties alongside them are as much a stage as the runway, can be cruel at times.
  — Leo Barraclough, Variety, 26 Mar. 2022
• Gay quickly chimed in, citing cruel names that the page has posted about her.
  — TIME, 24 Jan. 2024
• During the winter, my husband coaches sports on the weekends, so I’m cooped up alone with the kids, which feels like a cruel human experiment.
  — James Parker, The Atlantic, 11 Mar. 2025
• The current rush to delete our veterans’ history is shameful, misguided and cruel.
  — Dp Opinion, The Denver Post, 16 Mar. 2025