cruelly

1. 1.

   excessively

   “a cruelly bitter winter”
2. 2.

   with cruelty

   “he treated his students cruelly”

Questions about cruelly

What does cruelly mean?

cruelly means "excessively". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in cruelly?

cruelly has 2 syllables: cruel-ly. The stress falls on "cruel". In IPA it is /ˈkɹuli/.

Is cruelly a common word?

cruelly is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.