Word.ws English Dictionary

heartwrenching

heartwrenching adjective: having a painful emotional impact; causing grief or distress.

Adjective

heartwrenching (comparative more heartwrenching, superlative most heartwrenching)

  1. Having a painful emotional impact; causing grief or distress.
    • Near-synonyms: heartbreaking, heartrending
    • The interview with Sarah Mohess was both heartwrenching and inspiring.2007 September 23, “In a Tough City, Almost an Adult; An Active Approach to Psychic Change (4 Letters)”, in New York Times

Synonyms of heartwrenching

Forms of heartwrenching

comparativemore heartwrenching
superlativemost heartwrenching

Origin of heartwrenching

From heart + wrenching.

Words formed from heartwrenching

Questions about heartwrenching

What does heartwrenching mean?
Heartwrenching means having a painful emotional impact; causing grief or distress.
What part of speech is heartwrenching?
Heartwrenching is an adjective.

Words near heartwrenching in the dictionary

  1. heartwood
  2. heartwoods
  3. heartworm
  4. heartworms
  5. heartworthy
  6. heartwrenching
  7. heartwrenchingly
  8. hearty
  9. hearty as a buck
  10. HEAs
  11. Heasley

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heartwrenching (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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