Word.ws English Dictionary

tear jerker

tear jerker is the alternative spelling of tearjerker.

Meaning of tearjerker

Noun

tearjerker (plural tearjerkers)

  1. (informal) An emotionally charged film, novel, song, opera, television episode, etc., usually with one or more sad passages or ending.
    • Renamed in honor of the tube tearjerker, the work wondrously went on to become the most recognized theme in all of soapdom.1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 338
    Synonyms:
    cryfest, sobfest

Forms of tear jerker

pluraltear jerkers

Questions about tear jerker

What is tear jerker the alternative spelling of?
Tear jerker is the alternative spelling of tearjerker.

Words near tear jerker in the dictionary

  1. tear gassing
  2. tear gland
  3. tear glands
  4. tear into
  5. tear it up
  6. tear jerker
  7. tear jerkers
  8. tear line
  9. tear lines
  10. tear off
  11. tear offs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tear jerker (page history and authors); tearjerker (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “tear jerker.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tear_jerker. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.