heart-rending

adjective

1. causing great mental pain and sorrow

Other Word Forms

• heart-rendingly adverb

Example Sentences

But the fourth episode is just as good — maybe even better — featuring a heart-rending turn from Tremarco as the mom trying to hold it together.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

"The violence in Nepal is heart-rending. I am anguished that many young people have lost their lives," Modi wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

Read more on BBC

"It will not be an exaggeration to say that this heart-rending brutal crime was not just against Lakshmi, but it's a crime against humanity," Judge Choudhary said in his order.

Read more on BBC

After being discovered by Lily Allen, the Chichester-born musician had massive success with his first album, thanks to the heart-rending ballad Another Love – which became one of the most-streamed songs of all time, with more than three billion plays on Spotify alone.

Read more on BBC

The essays, arranged in an order corresponding to O’Connor’s discography, are individually formidable, well-written, heartfelt and heart-rending; the essayists picking their song and then connecting that song to “some kind of pivotal experience in your life, whether a moment of challenge or transformation or joy,” co-editor Martha Bayne explained.

Read more on Salon

Related Words

• appalling 
• awful 
• calamitous 
• cataclysmic 
• deadly 
• deplorable 
• destructive 
• dire 
• disastrous 
• dreadful 
• fatal 
• fateful 
• grievous 
• grim 
• harrowing 
• heartbreaking 
• miserable 
• painful 
• pathetic 
• pitiful