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English Lexical Project

1. FORM

Pronunciation

/t/ /te/ /tr/ /ter/

Homophone: tier
Homographs: tear n, tear v
Word class
noun
n. (countable): there was a tear in her frock
n (countable): a tear rolled down her cheek
verb
v. (transitive):I tore up the letter
v. (intransitive) + preposition: A nation torn asunder by political pressures.
v. (intransitive) + adverbial of direction: She tore along the footpath on her bike.
v. (intransitive) + preposition: He was torn between his duty and his better instincts.
v. (intransitive): The freezing wind made her eyes tear

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English Lexical Project
Inflection
tear (v.)
tore (past, /t/) - The blast tore a hole in the wall
torn (past participle, /tn/) He was torn between the two
tears - What he tears down cannot be rebuilt
tearing - She was always tearing her clothes
Derivation
Affixation
-tearable, tearer, tearing
-teary, tearful, tearless
Compounding
-tear-off, tear sheet, tearaway, teardown
-tear duct, tear-jerker, tear-stained, teardrop
Abbreviation
- TEAR: TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) Emulation At Receiver

Word frequency
-tear (v.): 7742
(Lists containing the top 5,000-60,000 words in English, based on the 400 million word
Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (http://www.americancorpus.org/)
-tear (n): ** -tear (v.): **
One of the most frequent words in spoken (S) and written (W) English, Longman
Dictionary of Contemporary English (http://www.macmillandictionary.com/)

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English Lexical Project
2. MEANING
tear (n)
- a hole or split in something caused by it having been pulled apart forcefully: there is a
tear in your jacket.
- a drop of clear salty liquid secreted from glands in a persons eye when they cry or
when the eye is irritated: a tear rolled down her cheek.
-something shaped like a hanging drop: A tear of amber.
tear (v)
-pull (something) apart or to pieces with force: He tore up that piece of paper.
- pull something apart in a figurative way: Italy was torn asunder by political issues.
- move very quickly in a reckless or excited manner: She tore along the footpath on her
bike.
-(be torn) be in a state of uncertainty between two conflicting options or parties: She
was torn between opposing choices.
- produce tears: The freezing wind made her eyes tear.
-remove by pulling forcefully: He tore up the floorboards.
-make a hole or split in (something) by pulling it or piercing it with a sharp implement:
She was always tearing her clothes.
-make (a hole or split) in something by force: The blast tore a hole in the wall.
- come apart; rip: The material wouldnt tear.
- damage (a muscle or ligament) by overstretching it: He tore a ligament playing
squash.

Sense relations
- Synonyms
tear (n.) = teardrop, rupture, split
tear (v.) = rip, rend, split, cleave, pull
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English Lexical Project
The meanings of tear in a visual thesaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/)



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English Lexical Project
3. USE

Idioms
-tear one's hair out: feel extreme desperation
Dealers are tearing their hair out trying to match customers with cars
-tear someone off a strip (or tear a strip off someone): rebuke someone angrily
When he realized it was all a put-up job he tore a strip off Julie
-that's torn it: used to express dismay when something unfortunate has happened to
disrupt ones plans
Oops, thats torn it. Costa Rica have scored again
-in tears: crying
He was so hurt by her attitude he was nearly in tears.
-without tears: (of a subject) presented so as to be learned or achieved easily
Tennis without tears.
Phrasal verbs
-tear someone/thing apart:
destroy something, especially good relations between people: a bloody civil war had
torn the country apart
upset someone greatly: stop cryingits tearing me apart
criticize someone or something harshly: Mum tore us apart with a real tongue-
lashing
-tear oneself away: leave despite a strong desire to stay
She couldnt tear herself away from the view
-tear someone/thing down:
demolish something, especially a building: they tore down an old barn for lumber
criticize or punish someone severely: they tear a man down and threaten him and
then they give him another chance
-tear around
To move about in excited, often angry haste.
To lead a wild life.
-tear off: to produce hurriedly and casually
Tearing off article after news article.
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English Lexical Project
-tear up
To tear to pieces
To make an opening in: Tore up the sidewalk to add a drain.
-tear something open: to open something such as an envelope or a parcel quickly by
tearing the paper covering it
Caroline tore the envelope open to see what was inside.

Examples of collocations from a corpus
(http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html)

001. sked. 'Only if you will come with me, and manage the stable f
or me. ' TEARs came into his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. 'O
h, Bee!'
002. boy, I hardly know what to say.' And much to Paul's embarras
sment, a TEAR appeared in each of Mr Prendergast's eyes and rolled slo
wly down
003. her and hit her. She turned away and tried to laugh, but the
re was a TEAR in her eye. The door opened and Fagin came into the room
. 'Now li
004. his 'little princess'. Daddy died when I was sixteen -
I still get a TEAR in my eye whenever I think of him. It was a terrib
le time for Mum
005. mother and Laura as they came in. 'This life is weary,' she
sang. 'A TEAR - a sigh. A love that changes, And then -
goodbye!' But on the wo
006. see me wash in their blood." Lucilla kept her eyes on her so
n, and a TEAR ran down her face. "And the Emperor's heart was broken b
ecause sh


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English Lexical Project
Examples of use of the word tear in advertising



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English Lexical Project
Examples of use of the word tear in online newspapers

When Injuries to the Brain
Tear at Hearts
It had been one year since a shooting at a
Tucson supermarket killed six people,
injured 12 others and left her with a
severe brain injury. Ms. Giffordss
appearance was greeted by an
enthusiastic crowd that applauded her
remarkable progress toward recovery.
The man next to her, fighting tears,
offered his own remarks. For the past
year, weve had new realities to live
with, said her husband, the astronaut
Mark E. Kelly. The reality and pain of
letting go of the past.
(From The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/ January 9, 2012)

Human Tears Contain a Chemosignal
Emotional tearing is a poorly understood behavior that is considered uniquely human. In
mice, tears serve as a chemosignal. We therefore hypothesized that human tears may
similarly serve a chemosignaling function. We found that merely sniffing negative-
emotionrelated odorless tears obtained from women donors induced reductions in sexual
appeal attributed by men to pictures of womens faces. Moreover, after sniffing such
tears, men experienced reduced self-rated sexual arousal, reduced physiological measures
of arousal, and reduced levels of testosterone. Finally, functional magnetic resonance
imaging revealed that sniffing womens tears selectively reduced activity in brain
substrates of sexual arousal in men. party.
(From Science Mag, http://www.sciencemag.org/ 14 January 2011)
Tornadoes Tear Through
Dallas-Fort Worth Area
At least two huge tornadoes churned
through the densely populated Dallas-
Fort Worth area on Tuesday afternoon,
leveling homes, snapping power lines
and hurling tractor-trailers into the air.
The National Weather Service described
the storms as large and extremely
dangerous. Warnings were issued from
early afternoon into the evening across
the region, which is the fourth largest
metropolitan area in the country and is
home to more than 6.3 million people.
(From The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com
April 3, 2012)

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English Lexical Project
Reference tools
Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/
Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (online)
http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/
WordNet
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
The Free Dictionary
http://www.thefreedictionary.com
Corpus Concordance in English
http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html
Visual Thesaurus
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/
Science mag
http://www.sciencemag.org/
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
WordReference
http://www.wordreference.com
The Free Dictionary
http://www.thefreedictionary.com
PhoTransEdit
http://www.photransedit.com