Meaning & use
callously
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Meanings
adverbnot comparabledisapproving
In a cold way that shows no care for other people's pain or feelings.
Grammar: Goes with verbs of action or speech: act callously, speak callously; stronger than carelessly.
Patterns
- treat someone callously
- act callously
The manager callously laid off the whole team by email.
He callously ignored the stranger who was asking for help.
She callously laughed at her friend's failure.
adverbnot comparableformal
Without any feeling of guilt or regret about the harm that one's actions cause.
Grammar: Often in news or legal writing about harmful acts: callously disregard safety.
Patterns
- callously disregard something
- callously exploit someone
The company callously disregarded warnings about the faulty brakes.
The scheme callously exploited elderly people's savings.
The report said the owners had callously put profit before safety.
Common combinations
- treat callously
- The prisoners said they had been treated callously.
- callously indifferent
- He was callously indifferent to her tears.
- callously disregard
- Officials callously disregarded the residents' complaints.
- callously exploit
- The firm callously exploited cheap labor.
- callously ignore
- They callously ignored the cries for help.
Synonyms and how they differ
- heartlessly
- Heartlessly is almost the same but a little more emotional and literary, as it stresses a lack of heart.
- cruelly
- Cruelly suggests actively causing pain, while callously can mean simply not caring that pain happens.
- coldly
- Coldly describes emotionless behavior and can be harmless, such as a cold greeting, whereas callously always involves hurt.
- insensitively
- Insensitively is milder and covers thoughtless remarks, while callously means the lack of feeling is settled and serious.
Opposites
Word family
- callous adjective
- showing no sympathy for others
- callousness noun
- lack of sympathy or feeling
- callus noun
- a patch of thick, hard skin
- calloused adjective
- having thick hard skin, as hands do after hard work
Commonly confused: callously or callus? callously or carelessly?
callously vs callus
A callus is a hard patch of skin, and callous is the adjective for unfeeling behavior; both are pronounced alike but spelled differently.
callously vs carelessly
Carelessly means without attention or care and does not imply that the person lacks feelings, so it is much weaker than callously.
Practice
The landlord ______ ordered the family out of the flat in the middle of winter, without a second thought.
Choose one answer.
Callously describes an action done with no concern for other people's suffering. Cautiously, calmly and carefully describe manner but do not show cruelty to the family.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “callously”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.