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MERCILESS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Having or showing no mercy
Example:
gave him a merciless beating
Synonyms:
merciless; unmerciful
Classified under:
Similar:
bowelless; cutthroat; fierce (ruthless in competition)
mortal (unrelenting and deadly)
pitiless; remorseless; ruthless; unpitying (without mercy or pity)
tigerish (resembling a tiger in fierceness and lack of mercy)
Also:
bloody (having or covered with or accompanied by blood)
inclement (used of persons or behavior; showing no clemency or mercy)
uncompassionate (lacking compassion or feeling for others)
hard (dispassionate)
unkind (lacking kindness)
implacable (incapable of being placated)
Antonym:
merciful (showing or giving mercy)
Derivation:
mercilessness (inhumaneness evidenced by an unwillingness to be kind or forgiving)
mercilessness (feelings of extreme heartlessness)
Context examples:
He could not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless fanged terror that would not let him go.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
And Buck was merciless.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
He was beset on either side by the merciless fangs of his erstwhile comrades.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
These were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the many merciless fangs.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
A hint of stiff-leggedness on their part, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and he would be upon them, merciless and cruel, swiftly convincing them of the error of their way.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as a voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
