cruelty
/ˈkɹuː(ə)lti/
"cruelty" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cruelty” has 11 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #10,186. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #10,186
- frequency rank, English
- 5,599
- “C” headwords
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 4
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An indifference to suffering or pleasure in inflicting suffering.
Corpus desk
Index EN-cruelty · cruelty · English
cruelty · rank #10,186 · 11 variants · 4 confusables
- FREQ-MID #10,186
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 4 pairs
- VAR-MID 11 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,599
- PHOTO-FINISH crab
Nearest frequency peer: crab (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “cruelty”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- cons
cons
89,818 corpus weight
- corpse
corpse
89,817 corpus weight
- crab
crab
89,816 corpus weight
- cruelty
cruelty
89,815 corpus weight
- Darwin
Darwin
89,814 corpus weight
- Dawson
Dawson
89,813 corpus weight
What this shows “cruelty” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cruelty |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkɹuː(ə)lti/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #10,186 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “cruelty”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 11 spelling variants around cruelty (IPA /ˈkɹuː(ə)lti/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #10,186 among 5,599 “C” headwords. Wiktionary lists 2 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for cruelty, with forms such as "ccruelty", "creulty", and "crruelty". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 4 confusable-pair relationships, "crusty", "cruel", "cruelly", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English cruelte, from Old French crualté (French cruauté), from Latin crudelitas. By surface analysis, cruel + -ty. The correct English form is cruelty, spelled C-R-U-E-L-T-Y.
Definition
- 1An indifference to suffering or pleasure in inflicting suffering.
- 2A cruel act.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how cruelty appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
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.
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,…
Etymology
From Middle English cruelte, from Old French crualté (French cruauté), from Latin crudelitas. By surface analysis, cruel + -ty.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- ccruelty
- creulty
- crruelty
- cruellty
- crueltty
- crueltyy
- cruelyt
- cruetly
- crulety
- curelty
- rcuelty
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of cruelty - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "cruelty", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (11 here; floor ≥5).