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

When Brady doesn’t face quick pressure, he is typically able to lacerate opposing defenses with short passes.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 30, 2019

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

From Slate ● Sep. 14, 2017

Commercial radio did not arrive until 1920, and 1916 phonographs would lacerate 2017 sensibilities, as would 1916’s silent movies.

From Washington Post ● May 5, 2017

The pores are small, unequal, long, flexuous, dentate, lacerate.

From The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise Its Habitat and its Time of Growth by Miron Elisha Hard

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

The district court lacerates the argument simply by restating it:

From Slate ● Dec. 4, 2023

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

From Washington Post ● Aug. 9, 2021

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

I replied, “My dear Ivanhoe, it distresses me to hear you are in want and it lacerates my heart that you should have made a request which I am compelled to decline.”

From Castellinaria and Other Sicilian Diversions by Henry Festing Jones

"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

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

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

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

After a cooling-off period, the two bumped into each other again and found, to their surprise and delight, that they shared a love of verbal sparring via lacerating, relentless wit.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2024

"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

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