Word.ws English Dictionary

tore apart

tore apart is the simple past 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 tore apart

What is tore apart the simple past of?
Tore apart is the simple past of tear apart.

Words near tore apart in the dictionary

  1. Tordoia
  2. Tordères
  3. tore
  4. tore a cat
  5. tore along
  6. tore apart
  7. tore ass
  8. tore at
  9. tore away
  10. tore down
  11. tore into

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tore 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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