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

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

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

Thallus 1–2´ long, decumbent or ascending, fleshy, linear-oblong, simple or slightly lobed, the margin sinuate; diœcious; involucre short, lacerate; calyptra cylindric, smooth; capsule brownish, furrowed; antheridia in 2-lobed receptacles.—Wet banks, N. J. to Ohio, and southward.

From The Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States Including the District East of the Mississippi and North of North Carolina and Tennessee by Asa Gray

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

Oh, oh," moaned she, with sobs; "what terrible agonies are these, and how full of despair the anguish that lacerates my breast!

From Henry VIII and His Court by Henry Niles Pierce

"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

Barabak: She lacerated Trump, citing his role inciting the Jan. 6 riot, his felony conviction for election interference and a jury’s finding he was liable for sexual abuse.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2024

So that at eight in the morning half the town was in the square, where Father Nicanor chanted the gospels in a voice that had been lacerated by his pleading.

From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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

Last month Success Academy released a lacerating report saying more than 900 city schools have failure rates above 50% in reading, math or both.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 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

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