ruthlessnessn.

1777 R. Potter tr. Æschylus Prometheus Chain'd in tr. Æschylus Tragedies 10 Yet upbraid not My ruder and unpitying ruthlessness.

1797 Monthly Rev. May 563 The ruthlessness of their enemies.

1825 C. Mills Hist. Chivalry I. iv. 130 There was not so much ruthlessness in his heroism as distinguished those ages of the ancient world which fancy and poetry have sometimes painted as chivalrous.

1855 R. C. Singleton tr. Virgil Georgics iii, in tr. Virgil Wks. I. 150 A crabbed eld, And toil, and ruthlessness of rigorous death.

1874 J. R. Green Short Hist. Eng. People iv. §3. 175 He had inherited the fierce ruthlessness of the Angevins.

1912 Jrnl. Philos. 9 473 Our industrial barons..are practising an undiluted ethics of power and ruthlessness.

1956 Life 2 Apr. 65/1 He united the ruthlessness of a hardened warrior with the craft and subtlety of a Machiavellian.

1994 J. Coe What a Carve Up! (1995) 4 Lawrence..pursued his extensive national and international business interests with a single-minded determination which many construed as ruthlessness.

2005 S. D. Levitt & S. J. Dubner Freakonomics Introd. 3 He was a scrawny, big-city teenager with a cheap gun in his hand and nothing in his heart but ruthlessness.