lacerate

While large shards of plastic can lacerate organ walls, the smaller particles, known as microplastics, can be just as deleterious.

From Salon ● Mar. 8, 2023

New verbs entered the surf lexicon: shred, tear, lacerate.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 26, 2019

It’s a story that will lacerate your heart.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 9, 2019

Despite the carping of her critics, Clinton does in fact lacerate herself for losing.

From Slate ● Sep. 14, 2017

Thorns stretch forth hooked claws, and lacerate and delay him, but they spring through unscathed, unchecked.

From John Ames, Native Commissioner A Romance of the Matabele Rising by Bertram Mitford

Baumbach’s signature serio-comic touch, in which the humor lacerates as much as the drama, should be in full effect here.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2025

This summer lacerates us as we gradually accept that warnings won’t work.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 9, 2021

This left Levy feeling like the possibility of motherhood has been cut off, and she lacerates herself for imagining she had it within her power to create a new kind of improvised family.

From Slate ● Apr. 10, 2017

As it is, spare a thought for likely runner-up, Michelle Williams for Manchester by the Sea, who lacerates your heart in a fraction of Davis’ screen time.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 23, 2017

This faculty renders children the richest treasure of their parents; casts into the shade all the toil and expense they cause, and lacerates them with bitter pangs when death or distance tears them asunder.

From The Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology by L. N. Fowler

"I'm convinced that if my nerve was lacerated tomorrow I would have our implant put in," he said.

From BBC ● Feb. 10, 2026

Judge Cote lacerated the plaintiff attorneys for cherry-picking evidence and ignoring studies that have found no causal link.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2025

He left the room, returning with a metronome whose loud, mechanical clicking lacerated the otherwise-fine mood being created by a Bach record on the turntable.

From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2025

After sitting out three games with a lacerated liver, he returned to play in a school-record 149 plays from scrimmage this month against Stanford.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2023

I find Abuela sitting motionless on her wicker swing, wearing a worn bathing suit, her hair stuck haphazardly to her skull, her feet strangely lacerated.

From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García

Trade bible Variety called it a "lacerating portrait," while Deadline said the "damning" film had "thrashed" Musk as "petty, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, cruel."

From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026

The writing in that book is sardonic and lacerating, but it doesn’t dazzle for its own sake.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 11, 2026

Despite those assurances, she and her agency have been the subject of lacerating critiques from Carter, the federal judge.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2025

Instead, with deep feeling and lacerating and gentle words, Leigh creates a world that, like the vast, mysterious one hovering outside its frame, can seem agonizingly empty if you can’t see the people in it.

From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2024

This impression was dispelled early on when a probationer in Briony’s year, a large, kindly, slow-moving girl with a cow’s harmless gaze, met the lacerating force of the ward sister’s fury.

From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan