Sample Sentences for
callous
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

callous as in:  callous indifference

•
She displays a callous indifference to others' suffering.
callous = heartless (cruel)
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
  • •
    "For starters," he said, "I will take each and every one of your books—and I will burn them." It was callous.  (source)
  • •
    Articles had appeared in nearly every major newspaper blasting the government's callous disregard for life.  (source)
    callous = heartless (with a disregard for others)
  • •
    Dennis saw the callous way my aunt treated me, and he saw her love trysts with Mr. Stein, and he never said anything about how she acted with Mr. Stein, but he'd always offer a kind word to me, or just make a joke.  (source)
    callous = heartless (with a cruel lack of concern)
▲ show less (of above)
Show 10 more with 5 word variations
  • •
    …he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not;  (source)
    callous = heartlessness (cruel lack of concern for others)
  • •
    ...what he was about to say was just an aftereffect of someone else's actions—someone else's callousness.  (source)
    callousness = insensitivity (emotionally)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.
  • •
    Have they been programmed to hate our faces particularly because we have survived and they were so callously murdered?†  (source)
  • •
    Lourdes felt his calloused palm, the metal of his ring clapping her temple.  (source)
    calloused = with thickened skin
  • •
    These earliest jobs, though, that she chose for us, they weren't generally of the callousing kind.†  (source)
  • •
    Absence cannot have rendered you callous to our joys and griefs; and how shall I inflict pain on my long absent son?  (source)
    callous = unfeeling
  • •
    He didn't seem to be sorry at all, and suddenly she was angry at him, not only for his callousness about the horse but because he didn't appreciate anything that was being done for him, by her or anyone else.  (source)
    callousness = insensitivity (emotionally)
  • •
    DANFORTH: Then you tell me that you sat in my court, callously lying, when you knew that people would hang by your evidence?†  (source)
  • •
    From first to last, in short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture.  (source)
    callous = insensitive (emotionally hardened)
  • •
    —as though cruelty and callousness were the norm, ordinary decency the marvel.†  (source)
▲ show less (of above)

callous as in:  a thick callous

•
One time he showed me the callouses on his hands.  (source)
callouses = thickened skin
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
  • •
    After nearly two hours of pampering—trimming her hair, shaping her nails, and scraping away the callouses on her feet and hands—Celaena grinned at the mirror in the dressing room.  (source)
  • •
    The calloused pads of his fingers brush against Hassan's eyes.  (source)
    calloused = thickened
  • •
    He explored the long fingers, the shapely nails, the work-hardened palm with its row of callouses, the smooth flesh under the wrist.  (source)
    callouses = thickened skin
▲ show less (of above)
Show 10 more with 2 word variations
  • •
    A calloused hand, a healed cut, the shiny slash of a burn on the deep bronze skin.†  (source)
  • •
    Celia displays her hands, marred by cuts and callouses.  (source)
    callouses = thickened skin
  • •
    I tell her about his ocean eyes and calloused fingers.†  (source)
  • •
    After, say, a month my hands had healed and I was developing large callouses from my scraping activities.  (source)
  • •
    Her archer's fingers were rough and calloused.†  (source)
  • •
    But Luke's scorn was real, and hurt her, and the callouses he'd carefully grown to wall off his nerves from other people's pain were torn away to the roots by her words; the image he thought he had sealed off—an image now familiar and tiresome, infuriating as a tubercular's cough, yet no less dreadful for his having endured it a thousand times, awake and asleep—the image of fire, leapt up again in his mind or, as it seemed, in the corners of the room: turning quickly, with a sudden bow to prove to himself as much as to them that he was still in command, he had fled.  (source)
    callouses = thickened skin (figuratively to indicate insensitivity)
  • •
    I stare at the ridged and calloused skin welted by thick brown fate lines.†  (source)
  • •
    A love affair is not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an English serving-maid who has callouses on her knees from scrubbing.  (source)
    callouses = thickened skin
  • •
    Sophie Mol wanted to know, tender London hands clasped in calloused Ayemenem ones.†  (source)
  • •
    Only Sukeena has noticed the splinters and callouses on my hands-and in typical fashion has thought better than to ask me their source.  (source)
▲ show less (of above)