tore

Pluraltores

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense of tear.

   He tore the letter into tiny pieces before anyone could read it.

   The sports car tore down the highway at terrifying speed.

   Note

   Only the tear that means rip, rend or speed has this past. That double reach makes tore down worth a second look. They tore down the old mill means they demolished it, while the car tore down the road means it raced along. In careful writing the partner form after have or be is torn, not tore.

   The council tore down the old mill last spring.

   Rioters tore down the statue overnight.

2. 2
   verbnonstandard

   Past participle of tear. Nonstandard: standard English uses torn.

   She had tore the wrapping off before checking whose gift it was.

   The flag was tore by the strong wind during the night.

   Note

   A participle with a literary past and a lowered present. In Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1761), Uncle Toby protests that “you have tore every bit of skin” off his hands. Today the form is colloquial and nonstandard, the kind of thing Rick Bass gives a character in Where the Sea Used to Be (1999): “Would've tore your head clean off.” In edited prose, use torn: had torn, was torn.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The surface formed when a circle revolves around a straight line lying in the same plane as the circle.

   The professor described the tore as a circle swept around an external axis.

   Calculating the area of a tore requires knowing both its radii.

   Similartorus

   Note

   Geometry keeps the hollow ring and the filled ring apart. This word names only the skin, the surface swept out when a circle turns about a line in its own plane, while the anchor ring is the solid inside it. When that line stays clear of the circle, the result is the familiar ring shape. Topologists describe the same surface as the product of two circles.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The solid body enclosed by a torus surface; also called an anchor ring.

   The engineer machined a steel tore to serve as the coupling ring.

   Filling the tore with foam changed the way it floated.

   Similartorus, ring

5. 5
   noun

   Alternative form of torus.

   Note

   Architects use this spelling of torus for the large convex molding, usually semicircular in section, that swells out at the foot of a column just above the plinth. The ring-shaped idea is the same one behind the geometer's surface, but in a building the word names a band of carved stone. Torus remains the main spelling.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   Dead grass that remains on hay meadows through the winter and into spring.

   The farmer burned off the old tore before the new grass came up.

   Thick tore lay matted across the meadow after the snow melted.

   Similarthatch

   Note

   This is a separate farming word, probably formed from the root of tear, with a Welsh word for a break or cut offered for comparison. It is a mass noun: some tore, thick tore, never a tore. John Mortimer's The Whole Art of Husbandry (1707) shows why it mattered: “the more Tore you have, the less Quantity of Hay will do,” since the standing dead grass did part of the hay's work.

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