inhuman
/ɪnˈhjuːmən
/adjective
1Lacking human qualities of compassion and mercy; cruel and barbaric: the inhuman treatment meted out to political prisoners...
- He and his political cronies are guilty of cruel and inhuman treatment of a helpless human.
- The new law explicitly states that people should not be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
- They violate the convention against torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Synonyms
cruel, harsh, inhumane, brutal, callous, sadistic, severe, savage, vicious, barbaric, barbarous;
bestial, monstrous, fiendish, diabolical, evil, wicked, heinous;
merciless, ruthless, pitiless, unpitying, remorseless, cold-blooded, heartless, hard-hearted, stone-hearted, with a heart of stone, unforgiving;
unkind, unkindly, inconsiderate, unsympathetic, unfeeling, uncaring
informal hard-boiled, hard-nosed
British informal, dated beastly
archaic dastardly, sanguinary
rare egregious, flagitious
2Not human in nature or character: the inhuman scale of the dinosaurs...
- Only a drama producer with inhuman restraint could have resisted such characters.
- To the very recesses of his mind he tracked down the reason for this strange and utterly inhuman sense of being.
- Robin slowly opened his eyes and saw a strange, inhuman figure in front of him.
Synonyms
non-human, non-mortal, monstrous, devilish, demonic, demoniac, ghostly;
subhuman, animal;
strange, odd, bizarre, unearthly
Derivatives
inhumanly
/ adverb ...- Three thousand years ago in ancient Egypt they painted their eyelids with malachite, because we are so constituted, our desires are so acute, that inhumanly large eyes attract us more than anything nature can give us.
- I felt that Singapore was quite inhumanly clean, the lack of cigarette butts and litter in the streets makes it seem so.
- I first found myself in Dominica's Carib territory after fleeing the inhumanly high register of an American jazz diva in neighbouring Martinique.
Origin
Late Middle English (originally as inhumane): from Latin inhumanus, from in- 'not' + humanus (see human).