Word.ws English Dictionary

tearjerking

tearjerking adjective: emotionally charged so as to induce sorrow.

Adjective

tearjerking (comparative more tearjerking, superlative most tearjerking)

  1. (informal) Emotionally charged so as to induce sorrow.
    • Robert Zemeckis, a director previously known more for brittle, antihumanistic comedy (Used Cars, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her) than heartwarming sentiment, moves into Oscar territory with an accomplished tearjerking comedy (1994) about a slow-witted southerner (Tom Hanks in the title...1995 March 17, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Don Druker, Pat Graham, Dave Kehr, Peter Keough, Henry Sheehan, “Movies”, in Chicago Reader

Forms of tearjerking

comparativemore tearjerking
superlativemost tearjerking
alternative formtear-jerking

Origin of tearjerking

From tear + jerking.

Words formed from tearjerking

Questions about tearjerking

What does tearjerking mean?
Tearjerking means emotionally charged so as to induce sorrow.
What part of speech is tearjerking?
Tearjerking is an adjective.

Words near tearjerking in the dictionary

  1. tearing up the pea patch
  2. tearingly
  3. tearings
  4. tearjerker
  5. tearjerkers
  6. tearjerking
  7. tearjerkingly
  8. Tearle
  9. tearless
  10. tearlessly
  11. tearlessness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tearjerking (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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