as in ruthless
having or showing a lack of sympathy or tender feelings
gave the beggar in the street a pitiless look and kept on walking
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Recent Examples of pitiless
The margin of error, even on the outside of the CFL, UFL and NFL, is pitiless.
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Dan Robson, New York Times, 19 Nov. 2025
The film’s only real villain is Al Pacino, doing a Colonel Sanders accent as Richard’s father M.L. Hall, whose pitiless rigidity stands in for capitalism as a whole.
—Katie Rife, IndieWire, 2 Sep. 2025
Each failure rekindled the gravitational pull of an existential, pitiless struggle.
—Hussein Agha, New Yorker, 22 Aug. 2025
From Hollywood's Golden Age and the '70s catastrophe obsession to today, these films have unearthed every pitiless corner of nature's wrath, from towering tsunamis and viral pandemics to all-out apocalypses and more.
—Ew Staff Published, EW.com, 3 July 2025
See All Example Sentences for pitiless
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pitiless
Adjective
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But he's drawn into a deadly Colombian drama involving a new ruthless arms dealer posing as a humanitarian, Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), and Roxana (Camila Morrone), an American businesswoman.—
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As Iranians know well from 1979, ruthless contests tend to define revolutions.—
Adjective
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With a merciless 56-22 thumping of Oregon in the Peach Bowl, the Hoosiers punched their ticket to their first national championship game appearance in program history.—
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All the while, the president, his top advisers, and his public-affairs offices have pumped out rhetoric and imagery that celebrates the merciless, military-style pursuit of deportations.—
Adjective
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Without prosecutors empowered to bring charges against wrongdoers, judges willing to strike down overreach, legislators daring enough to demand investigations and change laws, and citizens outraged enough to protest, any revelations by journalists will fall on stony ground.—
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After that historic journey, NASA charted a new course toward Apophis, a stony metal-rich NEA that offers a sharp scientific contrast to Bennu's carbon-rich composition (and was once thought to pose a serious impact risk to Earth).—
Cite this Entry
“Pitiless.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pitiless. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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