HEARTBREAKING

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does heartbreaking mean? 

• HEARTBREAKING (adjective)
  The adjective HEARTBREAKING has 1 sense:

1. causing or marked by grief or anguish

  Familiarity information: HEARTBREAKING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HEARTBREAKING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Causing or marked by grief or anguish

Synonyms:

grievous; heartbreaking; heartrending

Context example:

the heartrending words of Rabin's granddaughter

Similar:

sorrowful (experiencing or marked by or expressing sorrow especially that associated with irreparable loss)

 Context examples 

The letters about this question—mainly from readers in their late thirties—are heartbreaking.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

It was heartbreaking, only Buck’s heart was unbreakable.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

He had entitled the story Adventure, and it was the apotheosis of adventure—not of the adventure of the storybooks, but of real adventure, the savage taskmaster, awful of punishment and awful of reward, faithless and whimsical, demanding terrible patience and heartbreaking days and nights of toil, offering the blazing sunlight glory or dark death at the end of thirst and famine or of the long drag and monstrous delirium of rotting fever, through blood and sweat and stinging insects leading up by long chains of petty and ignoble contacts to royal culminations and lordly achievements.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

She announced her condition by a long, heartbreaking wolf howl that sent every dog bristling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)