heartless
adjective
Simple meaning
Without feeling, emotion, or concern for others.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hahrtluhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhɑɹtləs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Without feeling, emotion, or concern for others; uncaring; cruel.
Without a physical heart.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Without feeling, emotion, or concern for others; uncaring; cruel.
Used this way, heartless is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use heartless
- “His heartless actions and cold manner left her saddened and feeling alone.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
With gusto and without reservation.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Antonyms
Sense: without feeling or emotion or or concern for others
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.