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uptear

American  
[uhp-tair] / ʌpˈtɛər /

verb (used with object)

uptore, uptorn, uptearing
  1. to wrench or tear out by or as if by the roots or foundations; destroy.


Etymology

Origin of uptear

First recorded in 1585–95; up- + tear 2

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Go, sister, meekly tell the haughty foe, Not I at Aulis with the Greeks did swear To smite the Trojans and their towers o'erthrow, Nor sought his father's ashes to uptear.

From The Æneid of Virgil Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor by Taylor, Edward Fairfax

If in the boor’s garden the King eats a pear, His servants rapacious the tree will uptear; For every five eggs he gives bounteously, more Than five hundred fowls will his armies devour.

From Little Engel a ballad with a series of epigrams from the Persian by Borrow, George Henry

The paroxysm scourged the shore at the same time that it uptore the depths of ocean.

From The Man Who Laughs by Hugo, Victor

He many others, with as little let As fennel, wall-wort-stem, or dill uptore; And ilex, knotted oak, and fir upset, And beech and mountain ash, and elm-tree hoar.

From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 2 by Mabie, Hamilton Wright

I dream’d that each of my little pups    Was become at once a savage boar; Through my garden wall they broke, and all    My pleasant herbs and roots uptore.

From Marsk Stig a ballad by Borrow, George Henry

Got the whole house uptore, and Laurelly miscallin' me till I don't know which way to look; and now the little dickens is a-goin' to git well all right.

From The Power and the Glory by Keller, Arthur Ignatius

He said he crawled back into the cave and sat with his back against the uptorn roots, and thought.

From "Absalom, Absalom!" by William Faulkner

Then, what convulsions ensued; rocks were uptorn or split open, the mountains were shattered, the glaciers beaten into dust as the serpent twisted and lashed about in his agony.

From Basque Legends With an Essay on the Basque Language by Webster, Wentworth

But what could Typhoeus, and the strong Mimas, or what Porphyrion with his menacing statue; what Rhoetus, and Enceladus, a fierce darter with trees uptorn, avail, though rushing violently against the sounding shield of Pallas?

From The Works of Horace by Horace

What will become of you, delicate lily uptorn by the blast?

From The Baron's Sons by J?kai, M?r

The under-currents flowed again pure from the turbid soil, and the splintered fragments uptorn from the deep; but they were still too strong and too rapid to allow transparency to the surface.

From The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 3, October, 1851 by Various

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