Tear

How to spell tear

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tear

What does tear mean?

1. nounA drop of salty liquid that forms in or falls from the eye, often through crying.
2. verbTo pull something apart or damage it by force, leaving a rip.
3. nounA hole or split made by pulling something apart.

Tear in a sentence

• noun

  A single tear rolled down her cheek during the speech.

• verb

  Be careful not to tear the delicate wrapping paper.

• noun

  There was a small tear in the knee of his jeans.

• noun

  The onion made every cook in the kitchen shed a tear.

• verb

  Old documents can tear along the fold if handled roughly.

• noun

  The upholsterer repaired the tear in the leather seat.

Where does tear come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This single spelling actually hides two different Old English words that happen to be written the same way. The 'crying' sense comes from Old English 'tear', earlier 'teahor', meaning a drop of fluid from the eye, and it traces back to a shared ancient Germanic and Indo-European root that also produced the Latin 'lacrima' and the Greek 'dakru', both meaning 'tear'. The 'ripping' sense comes from a quite separate Old English verb 'teran', meaning to pull apart or rend, related to the Germanic root that gave Dutch 'teren' and German 'zehren'. Because the two words converged on the identical modern spelling, English now has a notorious heteronym: one rhymes with 'here' and the other with 'hair', and only context tells a reader which is meant. That overlap is precisely the spelling and reading trap, since the letters give no clue to the sound or the sense.

How the word is built

• tear (single root from Old English: no affixes)

Words that sound like tear

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• tier: One of a series of rows, levels, or ranks arranged one above or after another.