Alternative forms

• heart-rending

Etymology

From heart +‎ rendingCategory:English compound terms#HEARTRENDING.

Adjective

heartrending (comparative more heartrending, superlative most heartrending)Category:English lemmas#HEARTRENDINGCategory:English adjectives#HEARTRENDINGCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#HEARTRENDINGCategory:Pages with entries#HEARTRENDINGCategory:Pages with 1 entry#HEARTRENDING

1. That causes great grief, anguish or distress.

   Near-synonyms: heartbreaking, heartwrenching

   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbj&oslash￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 154:

     [T]he old man, who appeared to be an ardent fisherman, told me of the large trout he caught in the neighbourhood thirty years ago, when he came here from Gudbrandsdale, and made the most heartrending complaints of the decrease of fish and increase of saw-dust, just as Sir Humphry Davy makes in his Salmonia.

     Category:English terms with quotations#HEARTRENDING

   • 1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC:

     It wavered an instant—then there was a heartrending crash—and the canary-coloured cart, their pride and their joy, lay on its side in the ditch, an irredeemable wreck.

     Category:English terms with quotations#HEARTRENDING

2. That elicits deep sympathy.

   I am suddenly assaulted by the most heartrending puppy-dog eyes I've ever seen as Emi pouts.Category:English terms with usage examples#HEARTRENDING

   • 1908 June, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, Boston, Mass.: L[ouis] C[oues] Page & Company, →OCLC:

     Oh, Marilla, it was heartrending. Mr. Phillips made such a beautiful farewell speech beginning, ‘The time has come for us to part.’ It was very affecting. And he had tears in his eyes too, Marilla.

     Category:English terms with quotations#HEARTRENDING

   • 2005, Annabelle du Fouet, “The murky world from whence it all came” (chapter 2), in Weather Balloons Make Rotten Sex Toys, Ellora's Cave, →ISBN, page 43:

     These walls, under close examination, reveal messages carved in desperation by long ago victims. “If I must die, I beg it be done quickly,” reads one heartrending scrawl, signed by a man known only as Anthony.

     Category:English terms with quotations#HEARTRENDING

Further reading

• “heart-rending”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.