CALLOUS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Callous

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/kˈæləs/ Listen

adjective

Callous adj.

Hardened; indurated. "A callous hand." "A callous ulcer."

Hardened in mind; insensible; unfeeling; unsusceptible. "The callous diplomatist." "It is an immense blessing to be perfectly callous to ridicule."

Synonyms: Obdurate; hard; hardened; indurated; insensible; unfeeling; unsusceptible. See Obdurate. "A callousness and numbness of soul."

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Etymology of 'Callous'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Callous" Quotes from Famous Books

... read with a callous heart the effusions of the Belgian damsel. But then I gathered my attention. For the letter went on, "Notre cher petit bebe—our dear little baby was born a week ago. Almost I died, knowing you were far away, and perhaps forgetting ...

— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence

... be otherwise!" said Lovel, warmly"Heaven forbid that any process of philosophy were capable so to sear and indurate our feelings, that nothing should agitate them but what arose instantly and immediately out of our own selfish interests! I would as soon wish my hand to be as callous as horn, that it might escape an occasional cut or scratch, as I would be ambitious of the stoicism which should render my heart like a piece ...

— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... then are your faces set towards the south. Does the Black One live in the south? Well, you will journey to another kraal presently," answered the jovial-looking captain of the party with a callous laugh. ...

— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard

... became deathly pale. The first inkling of the deadly peril of his own situation had suddenly come to him with Sir Marmaduke's callous words. It seemed to him as if the very universe must stand still in the face of such treachery. The man whom he loved with all the fervor of a grateful nature, the man who knew him and whom he had wholly trusted, was proving his most bitter, most ...

— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... that? Because there are so many people in the world who believe that poverty is not sensitive, that the ill-fed, overworked boy of the slums is as callous as he seems dull. Because so many people believe that the weak and desperate boy can never be anything but a weak and vicious man. Because I came out of that morbid period of adolescence with a sympathy for children that helped to make possible one of the first courts established ...

— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

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