What does "mistreatment" mean?

Cruel, abusive, unfair, or thoughtless treatment of a person or animal (or rarely an object).

What is a synonym for "mistreatment"?

Common synonyms include: abuse, atrocity, ill-use, injury, maltreatment, maltreatment.

Mistreatment

noun

noun ·3 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Cruel, abusive, unfair, or thoughtless treatment of a person or animal (or rarely an object). countable, uncountable
"There were allegations of mistreatment at the prison."
2
the practice of treating (someone or something) badly wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

abuse atrocity ill-use injury maltreatment maltreatment

Example

More examples

"I shouldn't have to come up with excuses to turn someone down when I go out at night but we're all aware how dangerous it can be to go out at night, let alone having yourself up for mistreatment for telling the whole truth."

Etymology

From mistreat + -ment.

More for "mistreatment"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.