heartrending

comparative more heartrending · superlative most heartrending · alternative heart-rending

1. That causes great grief, anguish or distress.

   Near-synonyms: heartbreaking, heartwrenching

   2 more examples

   [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.

   1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 154

   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.

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

   Synonyms: heartbreaking, heartwrenching

2. That elicits deep sympathy.

   I am suddenly assaulted by the most heartrending puppy-dog eyes I've ever seen as Emi pouts.

   2 more examples

   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.

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

   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.

   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