核心畫面
You can think of cruelty as pain that arrives with no mercy in it — the hurt is not , not stopped, not taken back. Usually there is a person behind it who could have stopped and did not. Sometimes there is no person at all, and the word still fits, because the pain lands just as hard and just as .
可以想成「痛落下來，而中間沒有任何一點手下留情」：該收的力沒收，該停的地方沒停。多數時候這股痛的後面站著一個人——他…更多收起
可以想成「痛落下來，而中間沒有任何一點手下留情」：該收的力沒收，該停的地方沒停。多數時候這股痛的後面站著一個人——他明明可以不這麼做，卻做了；但英語也允許後面根本沒有人，只是事情就這樣落在某個人身上，字還是用得下去，因為那份痛一樣重、一樣說不出道理。原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
crueltynoun/ˈkɹuː(.ə)lti/
- 1
An indifference to suffering or pleasure in inflicting suffering.
- Fear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty into the crew. One captain, to strike terror into the rest, killed a slave and dividing heart, liver and entrails into 300 pieces made each of the slaves eat one, threatening those who refused with the same torture. Such incidents were not rare.
- YSL, as he is often called, is equally capable of casual, aristocratic cruelty and earthy, spontaneous tenderness, and when you study his face it can be hard to distinguish boredom from rapture.
- 2
A cruel act.
- The Begums' ministers, on the contrary, to extort from them the disclosure of the place which concealed the treasures, were, […] after being fettered and imprisoned, led out on to a scaffold, and this array of terrours proving unavailing, the meek tempered Middleton, as a dernier resort, menaced them with a confinement in the fortress of Chunargar. Thus, my lords, was a British garrison made the climax of cruelties!
- Gay songwriter behind bars! Needs sincere letter to help ease the tension from cruelties inside the joint.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。