PITILESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pitiless mean? 

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

1. without mercy or pity

2. deficient in humane and kindly feelings

  Familiarity information: PITILESS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PITILESS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Without mercy or pity

Synonyms:

pitiless; remorseless; ruthless; unpitying

Context example:

a monster of remorseless cruelty

Similar:

merciless; unmerciful (having or showing no mercy)

Derivation:

pitilessness (mercilessness characterized by a lack of pity)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Deficient in humane and kindly feelings

Synonyms:

pitiless; unkind

Similar:

inhumane (lacking and reflecting lack of pity or compassion)

Derivation:

pitilessness (mercilessness characterized by a lack of pity)

pitilessness (feelings of extreme heartlessness)

 Context examples 

And she was so pitiless that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great grief and misery.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

He sniffled and wept, but Wolf Larsen was pitiless.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

At first he cried softly to himself, then he cried loudly to the pitiless desolation that ringed him around; and for a long time after he was shaken by great dry sobs.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Pitiless as you have been towards me, I now see compassion in your eyes; let me seize the favourable moment and persuade you to promise what I so ardently desire.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Not for nothing had he been exposed to the pitiless struggles for life in the day of his cubhood, when his mother and he, alone and unaided, held their own and survived in the ferocious environment of the Wild.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Sir Oliver Buttesthorn, Sir Richard Causton, Sir Simon Burley, Black Simon, Johnston, a hundred and fifty archers, and forty-seven men-at-arms had fallen, while the pitiless hail of stones was already whizzing and piping once more about their ears, threatening every instant to further reduce their numbers.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs. Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the conclusion which necessarily followed.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Johnson and Leach were bullied and beaten as much as ever, and they looked for their lives to end with the end of the hunting season; while the rest of the crew lived the lives of dogs and were worked like dogs by their pitiless master.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)