Word.ws English Dictionary

tearfully

tearfully adverb: in a tearful manner.

Adverb

tearfully (comparative more tearfully, superlative most tearfully)

  1. In a tearful manner.
    • She was on her knees with her arms round Andrew's neck before he could prevent her. Her eyes were tearfully agleam, as, audibly reckless, she sobbed[.]1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 159
    • Ellis on Tuesday tearfully confessed to the felony of aiding and abetting false statements that she and other lawyers told Peach State lawmakers.2023 October 25, Stephen Collinson, “Trump rages as former acolytes turn against him under legal heat”, in CNN

Forms of tearfully

comparativemore tearfully
superlativemost tearfully

Origin of tearfully

From tearful + -ly.

Questions about tearfully

What does tearfully mean?
Tearfully means in a tearful manner.
What part of speech is tearfully?
Tearfully is an adverb.

Words near tearfully in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tearfully (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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