What it means
سنگدل (sangdel) means hard-hearted, callous, or cold-hearted. It is a pure Persian compound: سنگ (sang, stone) plus دل (del, heart), so literally “stone-hearted.” The word describes a person who is unmoved by others’ pain, not through active cruelty but through emotional indifference. It sits close to بیرحم (bi-rahm, merciless) but carries a more poetic, literary tone. A سنگدل person does not rage at you; they simply feel nothing. The noun form is سنگدلی (sangdeli, callousness). Its opposite is مهربان (mehrabân, kind).
How to use it
- چطور میتونی اینقدر سنگدل باشی؟ (chetour mituni inqadr sangdel bâshi?) “How can you be this hard-hearted?”
- مادرش خیلی سنگدله، حتی گریه بچهاشم اذیتش نمیکنه. (mâdaresh kheyli sangdele, hattâ gerye bache-ash ham aziyatesh nemikone.) “His mother is very cold-hearted, even her child’s crying doesn’t bother her.”
- دیدم که سنگدل نیستی، فقط ترسیدی. (didam ke sangdel nisti, faqat tarside.) “I saw that you’re not cold-hearted, you were just scared.”
- آدم سنگدل به هیچکس رحم نمیکنه. (âdam sangdel be hichkas rahm nemikone.) “A hard-hearted person has mercy on no one.”
Cultural note
The image of the stone heart runs through classical Persian poetry. Poets like Hafez and Rumi use سنگ as a metaphor for spiritual or emotional hardness, and سنگدل appears repeatedly in ghazals to describe a beloved who is indifferent to the lover’s suffering. In modern spoken Persian the word retains this slightly elevated, literary register, so using it in conversation adds a faint poetic flavor. When Iranians want a blunter insult they reach for بیرحم; when they want something more melancholy and expressive they use سنگدل.