[f. L. lacerāt-, ppl. stem of lacerāre, f. lacer mangled, torn.]
1. trans. To rend, tear, mangle; to tear to pieces, tear up. Also, † to separate by violence.
1592. Wilmot, etc. Tancred & Gism., V. i. G 3. The dead corps Which rauenous beasts forbeare to lacerate.
1633. Brome, Antipodes, IV. ix. In signe whereof we lacerate these papers.
1713. Derham, Phys. Theol., II. v. 48. If the Heat breaks through the Water with such fury, as to lacerate, and lift up great quantities or bubbles of Water, it causeth what we call Boyling.
1791. Cowper, Iliad, V. 354. He crush’d the socket, lacerated wide Both tendons.
1798. Marshall, Garden., xviii. (ed. 2), 283. So … the fibres will not be lacerated.
1808. J. Barlow, Columb., VII. 232. Shells and langrage lacerate the ground.
1868. Farrar, Silence & V., VI. (1875), 107. If they could show you how their feet have been lacerated by the thorns.
1880. Times, 18 Sept., 9/4. Jagged rocks and ice-fields will rend and lacerate the hapless being when his foot slips and his rope breaks.
2. With immaterial objects and fig.; esp., to afflict, distress, harrow (the heart).
c. 1645. Howell, Lett. (1650), III. 6. The Wars that have lacerated poor Europe.
1773. Johnson, Lett. to Mrs. Thrale, 17 March. Necessity of attention to the present preserves us from being lacerated … by sorrow for the past. Ibid. (1780), Lett. to Lawrence, 20 Jan., in Boswell. The continuity of being is lacerated.
1863. Miss Braddon, Eleanor’s Vict., I. ii. 33. How cruelly the old heart was lacerated by that bitter letter.
1871. R. W. Dale, Ten Commandm., ii. 54. The writers of the New Testament make no attempt to lacerate the heart by insisting on the details of our Lord’s sufferings.
Hence Lacerating vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1816. Byron, Parisina, xx. Scars of the lacerating mind Which the Soul’s war doth leave behind.
1872. Geo. Eliot, Middlem., lxxxi. Will Ladislaw’s lacerating words.
1877. Black, Green Past., vii. (1878), 54. The lacerating of a mother’s heart.
1893. Athenæum, 19 Aug., 263/3. The lacerating pangs of neuralgia.
