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

But the burghers were not at all satisfied, and shouted to him to stick his penknife into and to lacerate the letter of avowal in a similar fashion.

From Bartholomew Sastrow Being the Memoirs of a German Burgomaster by Sastrow, Bartholomew

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

It is not pain that lacerates; it cuts, and cuts clean when we keep ourselves still and let it do its merciful ministry upon us.

From Expositions of Holy Scripture Psalms by Maclaren, Alexander

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

From BBC ● Feb. 10, 2026

“We have been lacerated by the tentacles of corruption and by criminal networks that have profoundly marked the life of our country,” Zelaya wrote on X on Monday.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 9, 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

My hands are lacerated, I sound like I’m breathing through a gas mask, and I’m looking through a slit formed by the puffed lids of my right eye.

From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen

Ms. MeLampy is at her best when she eschews personal narrative in favor of her lacerating accounts of the animal festivals she visits.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 26, 2025

One of the most lacerating fictional critiques of the American dream remains the song “Remember My Forgotten Man” and its accompanying set piece in Busby Berkeley’s “Gold Diggers of 1933.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 2025

"But all the while he's lacerating and battering himself about not being able to write, because, for him, writing only meant writing the novel."

From BBC ● Mar. 23, 2024

On Friday, he continued his streak of lacerating rulings.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 16, 2024

And he still has a pretty lacerating smile, so the nickname has some staying power even if he doesn’t.

From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx