CALLOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does callous mean? 

• CALLOUS (adjective)
  The adjective CALLOUS has 2 senses:

1. emotionally hardened

2. having calluses; having skin made tough and thick through wear

  Familiarity information: CALLOUS used as an adjective is rare.

• CALLOUS (verb)
  The verb CALLOUS has 1 sense:

1. make insensitive or callous; deaden feelings or morals

  Familiarity information: CALLOUS used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CALLOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Emotionally hardened

Synonyms:

callous; indurate; pachydermatous

Context example:

cold-blooded and indurate to public opinion

Similar:

insensitive (deficient in human sensibility; not mentally or morally sensitive)

Derivation:

callosity; callousness (devoid of passion or feeling; hardheartedness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Having calluses; having skin made tough and thick through wear

Synonyms:

callous; calloused; thickened

Context example:

with a workman's callous hands

Similar:

tough; toughened (physically toughened)

Derivation:

callosity (an area of skin that is thick or hard from continual pressure or friction (as the sole of the foot))

• CALLOUS (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make insensitive or callous; deaden feelings or morals

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

callous; cauterise; cauterize

Hypernyms (to "callous" is one way to...):

harden; indurate; inure (cause to accept or become hardened to; habituate)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s somebody

 Context examples 

Absence cannot have rendered you callous to our joys and griefs; and how shall I inflict pain on my long absent son?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

In the excess of their own misery they were callous to the suffering of their animals.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Callous as they were to my suffering, they were equally callous to their own when anything befell them.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

But, indeed, from what I saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea they sailed on.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

“Come, come,” said Holmes, kindly, “it is human to err, and at least no one can accuse you of being a callous criminal.”

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Lateral displacement of the great toe, producing deformity of the first metatarsophalangeal joint with callous, bursa, or bunion formation over the bony prominence.

(Hallux Valgus, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

Much of his past was unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable: tales came out of the man’s cruelty, at once so callous and violent; of his vile life, of his strange associates, of the hatred that seemed to have surrounded his career; but of his present whereabouts, not a whisper.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

With a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

His muscles became hard as iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)