I've posted this on another forum, but you people are more like family, so I'd like to ask you:

I have noticed in, say, the last two or three years, that in news broadcasts, web interviews, and the like, concerning disasters, wars, and other violence, the results are always "heartwrenching," never "heartrending" anymore. A search of OneLook shows that "heartwrenching" essentially doesn't exist in dictionaries, "heartrending" is universal. A Google search shows 1,750,000 hits for "heartwrenching," 423,000 for "heartrending." Google Ngrams shows "heartwrenching" showing up in books about 1980 (there might be a tiny bump in the late 1930s, or that could be a rendering glitch), with "heartrending" in the lead, and both words increasing. This (Ngram) is American English – "heartwrenching" is apparently very rare in British books.
Has anyone else noticed this trend, if trend it is, and is "heartrending" in possible jeopardy?

Peter

PS: I've been told that "heartrendering" also has a 101,000-hit Google presence.