Word.ws English Dictionary

tearing

/ˈtɛə.ɹɪŋ//ˈtɛɹ.ɪŋ/

tearing is the present participle and gerund of tear.

Adjective

tearing

  1. (colloquial) enormous; of great size or impact
    • a tearing great giant of a man
  2. (colloquial) very hasty
    • a tearing hurry
    • The gallant young Indian dandies at home on furlough—immense dandies these—chained and moustached—driving in tearing cabs […]1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC

Noun (1)

tearing (usually uncountable, plural tearings)

  1. (usually) The act by which something is torn; a laceration.
  2. (usually) Distortion of an animated display when the contents of the framebuffer are rendered while it contains portions of two or more frames.
    • Even in this case, tearing still results if the swap occurs in the middle of a refresh cycle.2003, David P. Luebke, Level of detail for 3D graphics, page 303

Meaning of tear

Verb

tear (third-person singular simple present tears, present participle tearing, simple past tore, past participle torn or (now colloquial and nonstandard) tore)

  1. (transitive) To rend (a solid material) by holding or restraining in two places and pulling apart, whether intentionally or not; to destroy or separate.
    • He tore his coat on the nail.
  2. (transitive) To injure as if by pulling apart.
    • He tore some muscles in a weight-lifting accident.
  3. (transitive) To destroy or reduce abstract unity or coherence, such as social, political or emotional.
    • He was torn by conflicting emotions.
  4. (transitive) To make (an opening) with force or energy.
    • A piece of debris tore a tiny straight channel through the satellite.
    Synonyms:
    rend, rip
  5. (often, transitive) To remove by tearing, or with sudden great force.
    • Tear the coupon out of the newspaper.
  6. (transitive, with-down) To demolish.
    • The slums were torn down to make way for the new development.

See all 17 meanings of tear

Noun (2)

UK/ˈtɪə.ɹɪŋ/US/ˈtɪɹ.ɪŋ/

tearing (uncountable)

  1. continuous shedding of tears; epiphora

Forms of tearing

pluraltearings

Words formed from tearing

Phrases with tearing

10 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with tearing

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tearing

What does tearing mean?
Tearing means enormous; of great size or impact.
What is tearing the present participle and gerund of?
Tearing is the present participle and gerund of tear.
What part of speech is tearing?
Tearing can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce tearing?
Tearing is pronounced /ˈtɛə.ɹɪŋ/ (UK).

Words near tearing in the dictionary

  1. tearier
  2. teariest
  3. tearily
  4. tearin'
  5. teariness
  6. tearing
  7. tearing a cat
  8. tearing along
  9. tearing apart
  10. tearing ass
  11. tearing at

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tearing (page history and authors); tear (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tearing.wav, en-us-tearing.ogg.

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