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

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

But the next time I offend, tell me so plainly and frankly like a lady, and don’t lacerate my heart and bludgeon my vanity with imaginary faults of your own and purely gratuitous penance.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) by Andrew Lang

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

Still there is a spark of life left, and that spark demands that he should attempt to see whence came the arrow that so terribly lacerates his breast.

From The Delight Makers by Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

"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

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

Twenty years ago, Health was a lacerating noise band in a downtown L.A. nightclub, the Smell, famous for ear-splitting acts.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 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

"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

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