Dispiteous

[…] these .ii. noble princes [wer] by treyterous tiranny taken & depriued of their estate, shortly shut vp in prison & priuely slain & murderd by yᵉ cruell ambicion of their vnnaturall vncle & dispiteous tourmentours […]

How now, foolish rheum! Turning dispiteous torture out of door! I must be brief, lest resolution drop Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears.

O England! when the Wallace Wight was led, A fettered wonder, to thy capital, How cruel, how dispiteous was his fall!

“The unerring owls have hooted. The dispiteous and humorous gods have spoken. […]”

As we began our descent from the mountains, the image of Yi villages threaded together only by footpaths stayed in my mind. Not that they hadn’t been affected by the dispiteous anarchism of the Cultural Revolution, but they lived in relative isolation.