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''rend'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260615002359-00-⌔

rend - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

rend (third-person singular simple present rends, present participle rending, simple past and past participlerent or rended)

  • (transitive) To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; to split; to burst.
    • ✤ Powder rends a rock in blasting.
    • ✤ Lightning rends an oak.
    • ✤ If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak/And peg thee in his knotty entrails till/Thou hast howl’d away twelve winters.1
  • (transitive, figurative) To violently disturb the peace of; to throw into chaos.
    • ✤ a scream that rent the air
    • ✤ We are most vulnerable now to the messages of the new subcults, to the claims and counterclaims that rend the air.2
  • (transitive) To part or tear off forcibly; to take away by force; to amputate.
    • ✤ A time to rent, and a time to sow: a time to keepe silence, and a time to speake.3
    • ✤ And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.4
    • ✤ For a time, there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas.5
  • (intransitive) To be rent or torn; to become parted; to separate; to split.
    • ✤ Synonym: rive
    • ✤ Relationships may rend if tempers flare.

Noun

rend (plural rends)

  • A violent separation of parts.
    • ✤ She’d been in a couple of minor car accidents herself, and witnessed a few others, and the rend of metal was unforgettable.6

Etymology

From Middle English renden, from Old English rendan (“to rend, tear, cut, lacerate, cut down”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡(h)randijan (“to tear”), of uncertain origin. Believed by some to be the causative of Proto-Germanic ﹡hrindaną (“to push”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡ḱret-, ﹡kret- (“to hit, beat”), which would make it related to Old English hrindan (“to thrust, push”). Cognate with Scots rent (“to rend, tear”), Old Frisian renda (“to tear”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ɹɛnd/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɛnd

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]: ↩

  2. 1970, Alvin Toffler, Future Shock: Bantam Books, page 317: ↩

  3. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ecclesiastes 3:7: ↩

  4. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Job 2:12: ↩

  5. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 51, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 260: ↩

  6. 2002, John S. Anderson, A Daughter of Light, page xvi: ↩

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