heart-rending 
adjective
Causing great sadness or distress: a heart-rending story...
- At the moment of judgement, some displayed surprise, some anger, others a heart-rending sadness.
- Their stories are heart-rending and I am glad we are able to offer them the chance of safety and a better life.
- The storyline of the opera focuses on the heart-rending love story between the poet Rodolfo and the seamstress Mimi, a fragile but resolute girl.
Synonyms
distressing, upsetting, disturbing, heartbreaking, sad, tragic, painful, saddening, traumatic, agonizing, desolate, harrowing, excruciating;
pitiful, piteous, poignant, plaintive, affecting, moving, tear-jerking
rare distressful
Derivatives
heart-rendingly
- It was so again at Netherdale on Friday evening as, heart-rendingly, the Borders' hopes of proceeding in the Parker Pen Challenge Cup expired.
- Didn't I make you cry, with my heart-rendingly honest ‘confessional’ pieces?
- If she is cautious ascending to high C at the climax of the love duet, almost everything else she does is heart-rendingly truthful.
- pendulent
- penduline tit
- pendulosity
- pendulous
- pendulously
- pendulousness
- pendulum
- pendulum arbitration
- pendulum ball
- pendulum bob
- pendulum clock
- pendulum governor
- pendulum hausse
- pendulum observation
- pendulum saw
- pendulum spring
- pendulum swing
- pendulum watch
- pendulum wire
- penecontemporaneity
- penecontemporaneous
- penecontemporaneously
- penectomy
- peneid
- Penelope