lacerate

Verb

lacerate (third-person singular simple present lacerates, present participle lacerating, simple past and past participle lacerated)

1. (transitive) To tear, rip or wound.
   • Machinery, surgical precision / Lacerate the limbs of the poorest of the children / Watch them scatter through the fields of departed2019, “Human Target”, performed by Thy Art Is Murder
2. (figuratively, transitive) To defeat thoroughly; to thrash.
   • When the fixtures tumbled out of the computer for the start of a newly promoted season, Nigel Adkins must have wondered whether he had unknowingly broken any mirrors while walking under a ladder. Hot on the heels of a tough introduction to both Manchester clubs, a rampant Arsenal lacerated...2012 September 15, Amy Lawrence, “Arsenal's Gervinho enjoys the joy of six against lowly Southampton”, in the Guardian

Adjective

IPA/ˈlæ.sɚ.ət/

lacerate (not comparable)

1. (obsolete) Mangled, torn, lacerated.
   • But as they detrected the doing of theyr duetie, so god euer graunted vnto this realme force to compell them thervnto within memory, not withstandyng any theyr interruption by resistence, which vnto the tyme of our progenitour Henry the VI. neuer indured so longe as it made intermission within tyme...1542, Henry VIII, The Declaration of the just causes of the warre with the Scotts (as printed in the Grenville copy 5945 in the British Museum Library)
   • But who can gaze
     Upon that other form, which on the rood
     In agony is stretched?... his hands transfixed,
     And lacerate with the body's pendent weight;1805, Robert Southey, “Canto II. VIII.”, in Madoc, London: […] [F]or Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and A[rchibald] Constable and Co, […], by James Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, part I (Madoc in Wales)...
2. Jagged, as if torn or lacerated.
   • The bract at the base is dry and papery, often lacerate near its apex.