Other forms: rending, rends
To rend is to tear something violently apart. Rend the cloth, rent in two, rend the air.
It is archaic and literary and it survives chiefly in fixed phrases — rend the air, rend one's garments, which was a sign of grief. The past tense is rent, which is why a rent in cloth is a tear and has nothing to do with paying for a flat. Note heartrending.
1verbrendTo tear something violently apart.
“The storm threatened to rend the old sails to pieces.”
rend is a tearing.
Old English rendan means to tear. Its ultimate origin is uncertain, and rent, the tear, is its past participle.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱret-
Proto-Germanic
*hrindaną — to push
Proto-West Germanic
*randijan — to tear
Old English
rendan — to rend, tear, cut, lacerate, cut down
Middle English
renden
English, today
rend
Built from
From Middle English renden, from Old English rendan (“to rend, tear, cut, lacerate, cut down”), from Proto-West Germanic randijan (“to tear”), of uncertain origin. Believed by some to be the causative of Proto-Germanic hrindaną (“to push”), from Proto-Indo-European ḱret-, kret- (“to hit, beat”), which would make it related to Old English hrindan (“to thrust, push”). Cognate with Scots rent (“to rend, tear”), Old Frisian renda (“to tear”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA