tears

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of tear.

   Tears streamed down her face during the farewell.

   He blinked back tears as the crowd began to cheer.

   Note

   Spelling hides a split here. These drops from the eyes share their letters, but not their vowel, with the rips in cloth and with the verb meaning to rip. The singular also reaches beyond weeping. A tear can be any clear bead of fluid, such as a hardened drop of resin or balsam. It can also be a lament or dirge, the song that goes with crying.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of tear.

   He tears the letter in half without reading a word of it.

   The strong wind tears leaves from the branches outside.

   Note

   The present-tense verb that goes with he, she or it carries all of tear's force. A storm tears an opening in a roof, a crew tears down an old building, and a quarrel tears a family apart. Adding down turns ripping into demolition. Read aloud, it does not share a vowel with the drops from weeping.

3. 3
   SayTAIRZUS/tɛɹz/UK/tɛəz/

   noun

   Plural of tear.

   Small tears appeared in the canvas after years of hard use.

   The upholstery showed deep tears where the cat had clawed it.

   Note

   One spelling does three jobs here. Because a tear in cloth is a break caused by tearing, this plural shares its spelling with the present-tense verb, as in the cat tears the cloth and leaves tears in it. The plural for weeping is spelled identically but pronounced with a different vowel, so read aloud, context decides: tears in the canvas, tears in her eyes.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The viscous streaks that form on the inside of a glass when certain wines are swirled before tasting.

   Like thin trails of syrup slipping down the inside of a tilted jar.

   The sommelier pointed out the tears running down the bowl of the glass as a sign of high alcohol content.

   After a gentle swirl, prominent tears formed on the walls of the glass.

   Similarlegs

   Note

   Wine tasters borrowed the weeping word. After a swirl, drops gather high on the glass and run back down the bowl like tears down a cheek. They form because alcohol evaporates faster than water from the thin film of wine. That shift in surface tension pulls liquid upward until it beads and falls, which physicists call the Marangoni effect.

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