Word.ws English Dictionary

tore

/tɔː(ɹ)/US/tɔɹ/

tore adjective: hard, difficult; wearisome, tedious. Also the simple past of tear.

Adjective

tore (comparative more tore, superlative most tore)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete) Hard, difficult; wearisome, tedious.
  2. (dialectal, obsolete) Strong, sturdy; great, massive.
  3. (dialectal, obsolete) Full; rich.

Noun (1)

tore (plural tores)

  1. torus
  2. The solid enclosed by a torus
    Synonyms:
    anchor ring

Noun (2)

tore (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) The dead grass that remains on mowing land in winter and spring.
    • the more Tore you have, the less Quantity of Hay will do1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], →OCLC

Proper noun capitalized: Tore

Tore

  1. A village in Highland, Scotland.

Also used as

tore is also the simple past of tear.

tore is also the past participle of tear.

tore is also the alternative form of torus.

Examples of tore in a sentence

  • A piece of debris tore a tiny straight channel through the satellite.
  • As they accelerated onto the motorway, the wind tore the plywood off the car's roof-rack.
  • I tore a hole in my nylons while walking home through the woods.

All 40 example sentences with tore

Synonyms of tore

Forms of tore

Adjective
comparativemore tore
superlativemost tore
alternative formtor
Noun
pluraltores

Plural of tore: tores

Origin of tore

From Middle English tor, tore, toor, from Old Norse tor- (“hard, difficult, wrong, bad”, prefix), from Proto-Germanic *tuz- (“hard, difficult, wrong, bad”), from Proto-Indo-European *dus- (“bad, ill, difficult”). Cognate with Old High German zur- (“mis-”, prefix), Gothic 𐍄𐌿𐌶- (tuz-, “hard, difficult”, prefix), Ancient Greek δυσ- (dus-, “bad, ill, difficult”, prefix). More at dys-.

See torus.

Probably from the root of tear; compare Welsh word for a break or cut.

Words formed from tore

Phrases with tore

10 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with tore

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tore

What does tore mean?
Tore means hard, difficult; wearisome, tedious.
What part of speech is tore?
Tore can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tore?
Tore is pronounced /tɔː(ɹ)/ (UK).

Words near tore in the dictionary

  1. tordion
  2. tordions
  3. Tordoff
  4. Tordoia
  5. Tordères
  6. tore
  7. tore a cat
  8. tore along
  9. tore apart
  10. tore ass
  11. tore at

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tore (page history and authors); Tore (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)-Pvanp7-tore.wav.

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