Word.ws English Dictionary

tearing apart

tearing apart is the present participle and gerund of tear apart.

Meaning of tear apart

Verb

tear apart (third-person singular simple present tears apart, present participle tearing apart, simple past tore apart, past participle torn apart)

  1. (transitive) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see tear, apart.
    • She tore her ex-boyfriend’s clothes apart in fury.
  2. (transitive) To destroy.
    • The bomb tore apart most of the town hall.
  3. (transitive) To cause to separate suddenly or violently.
    • Love, love will tear us apart again1979, Joy Division, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
    Synonyms:
    rive
  4. (figuratively, transitive) To defeat overwhelmingly.
    • But Celtic could smell blood and they tore the Reds apart in the 12th minute.2011 February 1, Keir Murray, “Aberdeen 0 - 3 Celtic”, in BBC
    Synonyms:
    take apart

Questions about tearing apart

What is tearing apart the present participle and gerund of?
Tearing apart is the present participle and gerund of tear apart.

Words near tearing apart in the dictionary

  1. tearin'
  2. teariness
  3. tearing
  4. tearing a cat
  5. tearing along
  6. tearing apart
  7. tearing ass
  8. tearing at
  9. tearing away
  10. tearing down
  11. tearing into

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tearing apart (page history and authors); tear apart (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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