cruel

Forms

cruel (feminine cruelle, masculine plural cruels, feminine plural cruelles)^[1] Old French crual (about 1200) beside cruel.^[2][3] Old French also had crueus, crueuse, built on the old nominative crueus.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French cruel, inherited from Latin crūdēlis (“cruel”), from crūdus (“raw, bloody”), which it replaced in this sense.^[2][6][3] Rey glosses the Latin adjective as “making blood flow, delighting in blood, pitiless”.^[3] The TLFi, Rey and Bloch and Wartburg take the French form either as remade on the Latin or as the outcome of a popular *crūdālis, supported by Old French crual and Old Occitan crual.^[2][3][4] Meyer-Lübke, against Förster, thought such a form unnecessary and unlikely, since no other Romance language has a matching form.^[7] Etymonline gives an earlier Old French crudel.^[8]

Cognate with Italian crudele, Old Occitan cruzel, Catalan cruel, Spanish cruel and Portuguese cruel.^[7][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in the Vie de saint Léger (second half of the 10th century), of a person.^[2][9] Applied to things, as cruël torment, it is recorded about 1150.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The adjective has described people and animals and, by metonymy, actions and feelings since the 12th century.^[3][2] Medieval and classical love poetry weakened it to “unmoved by the love one inspires”, also as a noun in faire la cruelle; this use grew old in the 19th century and then disappeared.^[3]

English cruel was taken from Old French about 1200, first meaning “stern”.^[8]

Timeline

• Second half of the 10th century – First record, in the Vie de saint Léger.^[2]
• c. 1150 – Cruël torment, of a thing, and the adverb cruellement.^[2][3]
• c. 1150 – cruauté, first cruiauté, from Latin crudelitas.^[3]
• c. 1200 – The variant crual in Ogier le Danois.^[2]
• c. 1200 – English borrows cruel.^[8]
• 19th century – The love-poetry sense “unmoved by love” grows old.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Taking pleasure in making others suffer; cruel, pitiless: un roi cruel.^[10][2]
2. Of an animal, killing without need.^[10][5]
3. Showing cruelty: un sort cruel, une remarque cruelle.^[10][5]
4. Causing great pain or distress; hard to bear: une perte cruelle.^[1][5]
5. (dated) Of a beloved, unmoved by the love one inspires: faire la cruelle.^[3]

Word family

• cruellement

Related words

• cruauté
• cru
• Latin crūdēlis
• English cruel

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
5. ^ a b c d e Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
6. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 2, 1367a
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
10. ^ a b c Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert