tear up

verb

tore up; torn up; tearing up; tears up

transitive verb

1

: to damage, remove, or effect an opening in

tore up the street to lay a new water main

2

: to perform or compete with great success on, in, or against

couples tearing up the dance floor

a batter who's tearing up the league

Examples of tear up in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Seeing these two girl dads tear up about walking their babies down the aisle, the passage of time, and the inviolate personhood of their daughters was tender and precious. — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 25 Sep. 2026

This is just one of many parts of the course that were absolutely torn up, including an area just off the 1st green where a couple of thousand runners turned areas into mud pits. — Joe Kinsey Outkick, FOXNews.com, 20 Sep. 2026

Dewan tore up the ballroom with a fiery tango with her pro, three-time winner Val Chmerkovskiy. — Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly, 17 Sep. 2026

The city is densely populated but doesn’t have trash containers; instead, people leave their trash bags on the street, where they are often torn up by animals and the occasional vandal. — Esther King, The Dial, 15 Sep. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1620, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for tear up

• backup
• blowup
• breakup
• buildup
• checkup
• cleanup
• holdup
• hookup
• lineup
• lockup
• makeup
• markup