lacerate

— Machinery, surgical precision / Lacerate the limbs of the poorest of the children / Watch them scatter through the fields of departed

— 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 Southampton.

— 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 of mynde, wherby the possession myght seme to be enpaired: from the tyme of Henry the VI vnto the seuenth yere of our reigne, how our realme hathe ben for a season lacerate and torne by diuersitie of titles, tyl our time and syns by warre outwardly vexed and troubled, The story is so lamentable for some parte therof, as were tedious to reherse.

— The bract at the base is dry and papery, often lacerate near its apex.