Definition

1. Adjective (used as a predicate):

   • To have one's heart (or soul) wrenched: Describes an intense, visceral feeling of emotional pain, sorrow, or agony, as if one's internal organs are being torn out.
   • Heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching: Characterizes a situation, memory, or feeling that causes profound sadness or distress.

2. Adjective (attributive):

   • Of one's own flesh and blood, from one's own womb: Used to emphasize a direct, inseparable biological and emotional bond, typically referring to one's own children.

Usage Examples

• Adjective (emotional pain):

  • Nghe tin ấy, bà ấy buồn rứt ruột. (Hearing that news, she was heart-wrenchingly sad.)
  • Nỗi đau ly hôn khiến anh ta đau rứt ruột. (The pain of divorce left him with a wrenched heart.)

• Adjective (familial bond):

  • Đứa con đẻ rứt ruột của bà ấy đã đi xa. (Her own flesh-and-blood child has gone far away.)
  • Làm sao nỡ bỏ đứa con rứt ruột của mình? (How could one bear to abandon one's own child from one's womb?)

Advanced Usage

• The phrase is often used in formal or literary contexts to convey extreme emotional depth. It intensifies the adjective or verb it accompanies (e.g., is a much stronger form of - sad).
• It can describe the pain of a forced separation from someone dearly loved, not only children.

Variants and Related Words

• Rứt (v, dialectal): to pull out, to wrench. This is the root verb, often found in Central Vietnamese dialects.
• Đau lòng (adj): heartache, distressing. A more common synonym with less intense imagery.
• Quặn lòng (adj): to have one's heart/insides twist (with pain). Similar in intensity and visceral imagery.

Synonyms

• Heart-wrenching: causing great sadness or emotional pain.
• Agonizing: involving intense physical or mental suffering.
• Flesh and blood: denoting direct biological descent and close kinship.

Related Idioms

• Nói như rứt ruột: to speak with words that wrench the heart; to say something extremely painful, blunt, or cutting.
  • Lời từ chối của cô ấy nghe như rứt ruột. (Her refusal sounded like heart-wrenching words.)

1. Have one's heart (soul) wrung (with agony, sadness)
   • Buồn rứt ruột
     To have one's soul wrung with melancholy
   • Con đẻ rứt ruột
     Fruit of the womb, children of one'slown womb