Tears

How to spell tears

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tears

What does tears mean?

1. nounDrops of salty liquid produced by the eyes, especially during crying.
2. verbPulls or rips something apart, separating it by force.
3. nounHoles or splits caused by ripping a material.

Tears in a sentence

• noun

  Tears rolled down her cheeks as she read the letter.

• verb

  The cheap fabric tears the moment you stretch it.

• noun

  The old tent had several tears along its seams.

• noun

  The onions left his eyes stinging and full of tears.

• verb

  He always tears the wrapping paper instead of folding it neatly.

• noun

  She patched the tears in her jeans with bright thread.

Where does tears come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This single spelling actually covers two unrelated Old English words that drifted into the same shape. The 'crying' word descends from the Old English tēar, meaning a drop of fluid from the eye, which is related to the German Zähre and ultimately to an ancient root shared with the Greek dakru and Latin lacrima for the same thing. The 'ripping' word comes from a completely different verb, Old English teran, meaning to pull violently apart or to wound, related to the German zerren 'to tug'. Because English lost many of its old vowel distinctions, both ended up written t-e-a-r, even though one rhymes with 'fear' and the other with 'care'. The shared spelling is purely an accident of history, which is why the same four letters can mean either weeping or rending depending entirely on context.

How the word is built

• tear (Old English tēar/teran)
• -s (plural noun or third-person verb suffix)