break someone's heart

Idioms  

1. Cause severe emotional pain or grief. For example, If the verdict is guilty, it will break her mother's heart. This hyperbole has appeared in works by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and George Bernard Shaw, among others. In noun form it appears as both a broken heart and heartbreak (Shaw wrote a play entitled Heartbreak House, 1913). Today it also is used ironically, as in You only scored an A-minus on the final? That breaks my heart! [Late 1300s]

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Example Sentences

“It’s easy to forget that, even for a writer who prizes empathy. Sometimes even a brief story — or a hastily written review — can break someone’s heart for a long, long time.”

From New York Times • Jan. 20, 2021

What’s the best, kindest way to break someone’s heart?

From Slate • May 30, 2019

In all of my scheming before Joe, I had never conceived of a situation in which I would have the power to break someone’s heart.

From New York Times • Apr. 13, 2018

Because, hey, why break someone’s heart once when you can do it twice?

From The Guardian • Oct. 29, 2015

She thought about the old rule of Aphrodite’s cabin: that to be recognized as a daughter of the love goddess, you had to break someone’s heart.

From "Blood of Olympus" by Rick Riordan