Word.ws English Dictionary

tearful

/ˈtɪə(ɹ)fʊl/US/ˈtɪɹfʊl/

tearful adjective: accompanied by tears; crying, or about to cry.

tearful: woman with blue eye
Photo by Lane Jackman on Unsplash

Adjective

tearful (comparative more tearful, superlative most tearful)

  1. Accompanied by tears; crying, or about to cry.
    • Aaron got a little tearful until Laura came to reassure him.
    • The week that was yet to elapse, she spent in wandering through her uncle's favourite walks in hours of tearful vigil, beside his tomb, and in collecting together every trifle on which he had set a value.1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Remembrance of the Dead”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 322
  2. Sorrowful.
    • Receiving the news of Joseph Beam's death two days after Christmas was a piercing blow that sent me into a tearful and contemplative stupor from which I have not yet emerged.1989 February 5, Craig G. Harris, “Your Life's All In Your Dreams And Your Dreams Are All In Your Life”, in Gay Community News, volume 16, number 29, page 9

tearful meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

tearful in Hindi

accompanied by tears
अश्रुपूर्ण aśrupūrṇ
sorrowful
रुआँसा ruā̃sā, रुआँसी ruā̃sī

tearful in Marathi

अश्रूयुक्त

tearful in Urdu

tearful
اشک آلودہ ašk āludah
tearful, watery
اشک بار ašk bār

tearful in Bengali

tearful
ছলছল cholochol
More languagesFewer languages
tearful in Malayalam
കണ്ണീരോടെ
tearful in Arabic
دَامِع dāmiʕ
tearful in Persian
تر tar

Examples of tearful in a sentence

  • The child's mother was tearful as he boarded the bus for his first day of primary school.
  • It was a tearful and heartfelt reunion as the trapped miners finally saw their dear loved ones again.
  • Arvay’s tearful speech followed the usual pattern, and everybody said it was just fine.

All 10 example sentences with tearful

Synonyms of tearful

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of tearful

Forms of tearful

comparativemore tearful
superlativemost tearful

Origin of tearful

From tear + -ful.

Words formed from tearful

Words that rhyme with tearful

Questions about tearful

What does tearful mean?
Tearful means accompanied by tears; crying, or about to cry.
What is tearful in Hindi?
Tearful in Hindi is अश्रुपूर्ण (aśrupūrṇ), रुआँसा (ruā̃sā), रुआँसी (ruā̃sī). See Tearful meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is tearful?
Tearful is an adjective.
How do you pronounce tearful?
Tearful is pronounced /ˈtɪə(ɹ)fʊl/ (UK).

Words near tearful in the dictionary

  1. tearer
  2. tearers
  3. teares
  4. tearest
  5. teareth
  6. tearful
  7. tearfully
  8. tearfulness
  9. tearfulnesses
  10. teargas
  11. teargases

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tearful (page history and authors); tearful (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); اشک آلودہ (Urdu) (page history and authors); ছলছল (Bengali) (page history and authors); tearful (Malayalam Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tearful.wav.

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