How to Use to shreds in a Sentence

to shreds

idiom
  • It’s torn to shreds, and the collar is flipped open and just dangling in the wind.
    Adam Tschorn, Los Angeles Times, 21 July 2023
  • What is turning the leaves to shreds and is there a control?
    Tom MacCubbin, orlandosentinel.com, 16 Oct. 2021
  • Ripping it to shreds and putting it in the garbage could be a good substitution.
    Joan Rusek, cleveland, 28 Dec. 2020
  • Low trees jabbed out at every angle, ripping his thin clothes to shreds.
    David Reamer, Anchorage Daily News, 5 June 2023
  • Jordan is heard yelling in the video as the truck's exterior is blasted to shreds by the fast moving train.
    Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, Fox News, 9 June 2023
  • Then sit back and watch the Swifties unleash their fury and tear to shreds the Gordian knot that was once catastrophic global warming.
    Ivan Ehlers, The New Yorker, 12 Oct. 2023
  • No one wants to tear their fresh fillets to shreds, and there’s no surer way to do so than going at them with an inferior blade.
    Cosmo Genova, Field & Stream, 3 May 2023
  • Bo and Hector escape before the creature rips their former colleagues to shreds.
    Los Angeles Times Staff, Los Angeles Times, 23 June 2023
  • The family’s Christmas had been ripped to shreds by their toddler in only a few minutes — and the parents now had to race against time to put it all back together.
    Timothy Bella, Washington Post, 26 Dec. 2023
  • Softening the point of entry is one piece of the puzzle, as is buffering the sheer humiliation of watching your army get ripped to shreds.
    Luke Winkie, Wired, 11 Dec. 2021
  • And then periodically, Bertha and/or George will swoop in to absolutely tear one or more of them to shreds.
    Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2023
  • Instead of a relatively close up view of homes and businesses ripped to shreds, the Landsat 9 image reveals the scar gouged out of the landscape by one of the March 24 tornadoes.
    Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 30 Mar. 2023
  • Thankfully, the season 4 premiere panned to the smoky building and showed Beth walking out, albeit charred and disoriented, with her clothes ripped to shreds.
    Rebecca Norris, Country Living, 13 Nov. 2021
  • But Boston’s stout zone defensive structure has also been clawed to shreds by the Panthers, headlined by Friday’s shootout.
    Conor Ryan, BostonGlobe.com, 29 Apr. 2023
  • Magic Johnson did not rip the Washington Commanders to shreds.
    Chuck Schilken, Los Angeles Times, 6 Oct. 2023
  • Do your big dreams seem to get torn to shreds with either confusion around how to bring them into reality, or lack of support from the collective?
    Amy Solara, Travel + Leisure, 14 May 2021
  • The underbelly of an already inconsistent relief corps was torn to shreds, yielding a seven-spot in a train wreck of a fifth inning.
    Jack Harris, Los Angeles Times, 21 Apr. 2023
  • Instead of plushies that will be ripped to shreds and spray stuffing all over your house, Super Chewer promises only heavy-duty toys with rubber or nylon cores.
    Kalea Martin, Peoplemag, 26 Mar. 2023
  • The new Bounty is strong when wet too, so chores like washing a window and scrubbing a carpet stain that can tear regular paper towels to shreds are no match for Bounty.
    Carolyn Forté, Good Housekeeping, 15 Aug. 2023
  • Those factors include warm ocean temperatures, which help feed tropical storms, and low wind shear, which allows a storm to retain its structure rather than be torn to shreds.
    Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 25 Oct. 2023
  • When a star is in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole—perhaps pushed there by the gravitational nudging of another nearby star—the intense tidal forces can rip it to shreds.
    Neil Gehrels, Scientific American, 1 Apr. 2017
  • An incredibly bright flash that appeared in the night sky in February was the result of a star straying too close to a supermassive black hole, meeting its untimely end there as it was ripped to shreds.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 30 Nov. 2022
  • Later, when the two are verbally tearing each other to shreds away from the guests, Shiv accuses Tom of depriving her of having a relationship with her father in the last months of Logan’s life.
    Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 8 May 2023
  • The app launched Friday anyway and was immediately ripped to shreds by the Internet for many security issues.
    Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica, 20 Nov. 2023
  • The merger, which probably happened between 8 billion and 11 billion years ago, would have catastrophically disrupted the young Milky Way, ripped the other galaxy to shreds, and sparked a firestorm of new star formation.
    Quanta Magazine, 28 Sep. 2023
  • The merger, which probably happened between 8 billion and 11 billion years ago, would have catastrophically disrupted the young Milky Way, ripped the other galaxy to shreds, and sparked a firestorm of new star formation.
    WIRED, 12 Nov. 2023
  • Those scenes include graphic decapitations, people ripped to shreds by dogs, and Dodienne gruesomely maiming herself to fend off being sold without her children.
    Odie Henderson, BostonGlobe.com, 7 Dec. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'to shreds.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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