cruel vs sort out

cruel

adv
  • To a great degree; terribly. 

verb
  • To violently provoke (a child) in the belief that this will make them more assertive. 

  • To spoil or ruin (one's chance of success) 

adj
  • Cool; awesome; neat. 

  • Intentionally causing or reveling in pain and suffering; merciless, heartless. 

  • Harsh; severe. 

sort out

verb
  • To provide (somebody) with a necessity, or a solution to a problem. 

  • To fix, as a problem. 

  • To separate from the remainder of a group; often construed with from. 

  • To clarify by reviewing mentally. 

  • To arrange. 

  • To organise or separate into groups, as a collection of items, so as to make tidy. 

  • To attack physically. 

How often have the words cruel and sort out occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )