One way to picture it: something has crossed out of the human circle. Whatever warmth, pity, or familiar shape we expect from a person simply isn't there — and what's left feels wrong to us precisely because we measured it against a person.
From the word’s history
English inhuman comes through Middle English inhumayne and Middle French inhumain from Latin inhūmānus — in- 'not' + hūmānus 'human'. The word is literally the negation of 'human', which is why both modern senses are read against a human standard.
inhuman 經中古英語 inhumayne、中古法語 inhumain 來自拉丁語 inhūmānus，就是 in-（不）加上 hūmānus（人的）。字面上它單純是「human」的否定，所以今天兩個用法都還是拿「人應該是什麼樣子」當隱形的標準：一個否定的是人心，一個否定的是人形人聲。
Wiktionary (inhuman, adjective etymology: Middle English inhumayne < Middle French inhumain < Latin inhūmānus)
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原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
inhumanadj/ɪnˈhjuːmən/
- 1
Of or pertaining to inhumanity and the indifferently cruel, sadistic or barbaric behavior it brings.
- It was replaced by a New Euston, "bold in design and layout and in keeping with a new railway era". Betjeman was unmoved, describing it tersely as "no masterpiece" and noting that its lack of platform seating made it an "inhuman structure" which seemed to ignore passengers.
- 2
Transcending or different than what is human.
- When he was out among men, seeking his own ends, and “making good! his colliery workings, he had an almost uncanny shrewdness, hardness, and a straight sharp punch. It was as if his very passivity and prostitution to the Magna Mater gave him insight into material business affairs, and lent him a certain remarkable inhuman force.
- The organism that embraces this theme in its devious ramifications is the great business house of Dombey and Son, symptom and epitome of selfish money power and warping tyranny. And the special symbol that spells wreckage, devastation, and the unleashed violence of the inhuman force that thus came to possess mankind is that new monster of the mid-nineteenth-century world, heartless embodiment of mechanized energy, the railroad —the same railroad so often pictured in the Punch of those days or in the maledictions of Ruskin as a glaring, headlit engine of destruction, gouging open the green English landscape or the outposts of London, riding down the lives of men, and bringing the smoke and soot of industrialism in its wake: the dragon of a world grown heartless and of a future that promised to become more heartless still.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。