tear-ass

English

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɛɚ.æs/

Verb

tear-ass (third-person singular simple present tear-asses, present participle tear-assing, simple past and past participle tear-assed)

1. (US, informal, vulgar) To move extremely quickly; to rush.

   Synonyms: tear ass; see also Thesaurus:rush

   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest , Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 339:

     Kittenplan tells Ingersoll to write his congressman about it and over LaMont Chu’s pleas for reasoned discussion takes several more theoretically valuable warheads out of the industrial-solvent bucket and gets truly serious about hitting Ingersoll, moving steadily east across Nigeria and Chad, causing Ingersoll to run due north across the courts’ map at impressive speed, abandoning IRLIBSYR’s ammo-bucket and tear-assing up through Siberia crying Foul.

   • 2011, James Patterson, Marshall Karp, Kill Me if You Can: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 237:

     If this were New York City, we'd have jumped in a cab and tear-assed down the Grand Central Parkway straight to JFK. But there aren't a lot of high-speed getaway options in Venice. A gondola would have been romantic but not too smart.

   • 2016 October 19, Matthew Dessem, “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back”, in Slate‎, archived from the original on 2023-07-11:

     Here is how Jack Reacher and Susan Turner deal with their problems: Run run run run run. The first half of the film is overstuffed with shots of Cruise and Smulders tear-assing over field and dale, karate chopping the air in front of them with each stride so you can tell they're military.

References

• Jonathon Green (2024) “tear arse v.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang