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American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To tear or split apart or into pieces violently. See Synonyms at tear¹.
2. v. To tear (one's garments or hair) in anguish or rage.
3. v. To tear away forcibly; wrest.
4. v. To pull, split, or divide as if by tearing: "Chip was rent between the impulse to laugh wildly and a bitterness that threatened hot tears” ( Louis Auchincloss).
5. v. To pierce or disturb with sound: a scream rent the silence.
6. v. To cause pain or distress to: tales that rend the heart.
7. v. To become torn or split; come apart.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; tear asunder; split.
2. To remove or pluck away with violence; tear away.
3. Synonyms Rip, Tear, Rend, Split, Cleave, Fracture, Chop. In garments we rip along the line at which they were sewed; we tear the texture of the cloth; we say, “It is not torn; it is only ripped.” More broadly, rip, especially with up, stands for a cutting open or apart with a quick, deep stroke: as, to rip up a body or a sack of meal. Rend implies great force or violence. To split is primarily to divide lengthwise or by the grain: as, to split wood. Cleave may be a more dignified word for split, or it may express a cutting apart by a straight, heavy stroke. Fracture may represent the next degree beyond cracking, the lightest kind of breaking, leaving the parts in place: as, a fractured bone or plate of glass; or it may be a more formal word for break. To chop is to cut apart with a heavy stroke, which is generally across the grain or natural cleavage, or through the narrow dimension of the material: chopping wood is thus distinguished from splitting wood.
4. To be or to become rent or torn; become disunited; split; part asunder.
5. To cause separation, division, or strife.
6. An obsolete variant of ren.

Wiktionary

1. v. transitive To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; to tear asunder; to split; to burst
2. v. transitive To part or tear off forcibly; to take away by force.
3. v. intransitive To be rent or torn; to become parted; to separate; to split.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; to tear asunder; to split; to burst
2. v. To part or tear off forcibly; to take away by force.
3. v. To be rent or torn; to become parted; to separate; to split.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. tear or be torn violently