Word.ws English Dictionary

tearsome

/ˈtɪɚ.səm/

tearsome adjective: marked by tears or weeping.

Adjective

tearsome (comparative more tearsome, superlative most tearsome)

  1. Marked by tears or weeping
    • [...] and they were seen on the holy mountains going with sad and tearsome faces: [...]2009, Chiara Matraini, Selected Poetry and Prose
    • And then he threw open the bedroom door and she commenced to laugh, but even then, it was a weepy, gasping, tearsome kind of laughter that was purely an overflowing of joy.2011, Dixie Browning, The Baby Notion

Forms of tearsome

comparativemore tearsome
superlativemost tearsome

Origin of tearsome

From tear + -some.

Questions about tearsome

What does tearsome mean?
Tearsome means marked by tears or weeping.
What part of speech is tearsome?
Tearsome is an adjective.
How do you pronounce tearsome?
Tearsome is pronounced /ˈtɪɚ.səm/.

Words near tearsome in the dictionary

  1. tears up
  2. tears up the dance floor
  3. tears up the pea patch
  4. tearsheet
  5. tearsheets
  6. tearsome
  7. tearstain
  8. tearstained
  9. tearstains
  10. tearstreaked
  11. tearstrip

Source and license

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