Tearing

How to spell tearing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tearing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tearing mean?

1. verbPulling something apart or into pieces by force.
2. verbProducing tears, so that the eyes water or fill with liquid.

Tearing in a sentence

• The courier was tearing the packaging open to check the contents.

• The cold wind on the cycle home left her eyes tearing for the whole journey.

• She kept tearing the old wallpaper from the bedroom wall in long strips.

• Chopping the onions had him tearing within seconds at the kitchen counter.

Where does tearing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The spelling 'tearing' sits on top of two old words that happen to look identical in their base form. The rip-and-pull sense descends from the Old English verb 'teran', meaning 'to pull apart or rend', which traces back to a Germanic root shared with German 'zerren' (to tug) and ultimately an ancient root meaning 'to tear or rub away'. The watering-eyes sense comes instead from the Old English noun 'tēar', a teardrop, related to German 'Zähre' and to Latin 'lacrima' through a much older common ancestor. Adding the participle ending '-ing' to either verb produces the same written form, which is why a single spelling 'tearing' carries two unrelated pronunciations. The spelling itself is mercifully regular: you simply keep the whole word 'tear' and add '-ing', with no silent letters to drop, so the only real puzzle is which of the two meanings a reader intends.

How the word is built

• tear (Old English teran, to pull apart)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)