Word.ws English Dictionary

tears at

tears at is the third-person singular simple present indicative of tear at.

Meaning of tear at

Verb

tear at (third-person singular simple present tears at, present participle tearing at, simple past tore at, past participle torn at)

  1. To pull at violently.
    • When the house was empty she went from room to room. Ripping sheets from beds and tearing at them and kicking over nightstands and busting mirrors.2021, Michael Farris Smith, chapter 56, in Nick, New York; Boston; London: Little, Brown and Company, page 275
  2. To afflict or aggrieve.
    • The situation tore at his heart.

Questions about tears at

What is tears at the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Tears at is the third-person singular simple present indicative of tear at.

Words near tears at in the dictionary

  1. tears
  2. tears a cat
  3. tears along
  4. tears apart
  5. tears ass
  6. tears at
  7. tears away
  8. tears before bedtime
  9. tears down
  10. tears into
  11. tears it up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tears at (page history and authors); tear at (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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