lacerate \LAS-uh-reyt\,
verb:
1. to tear roughly; mangle: The barbed wire lacerated his hands.
2. to distress or torture mentally or emotionally; wound deeply; pain greatly: His bitter criticism lacerated my heart.
adjective:
1. lacerated.
She seemed to have the power still to lacerate him, inside his bowels. Not in his mind or spirit, but in his old emotional, passional self: right in the middle of his belly, to tear him and make him feel he bled inwardly.
-- D. H. Lawrence, "The Plumed Serpent," 1926
For some weeks he confined the area of effeminacy to his left knee, and on one occasion he was base enough to lacerate the flesh in secret with a fish-hook in an attempt to justify the statement about his skin.
-- Sylvia Townsend Warner, "Mr. Fortune's Maggot," 1927
Lacerate entered English in the late 1500s from the Latin lacer meaning "mangled" or "torn."
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