Other forms: torn, tears, tore, tearing
A tear is a drop of water from the eye — said TEER, and usually plural: in tears, holding back tears, tears running down her face. It is one of the commonest nouns in the language and it almost never appears alone in the singular except in writing.
The same four letters are also a completely different word, said TAIR, meaning to rip: tear the paper, a tear in the seat, and the irregular forms tear, tore, torn. There is no rule to help — you have to know which word is meant and the sentence has to tell you. English has a handful of these pairs (lead, read, wind) and this is the one that catches learners earliest, because both members are so common.
1nountearA drop of water that falls from your eye when you cry.
“There were tears on her face before he had finished speaking.”
2verbripTo pull something apart or make a hole in it.
“Do not tear the envelope, there is a photograph inside.”
3nounsplitA hole or split made by tearing.
“There is a tear in the lining.”
4verbmoveTo move very fast and carelessly.
“He tore down the corridor and out of the door.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
tear is a drop from the eye, or a rip.
Also accepted in games: tears
The ripping verb comes from Old English teran and a Proto-Indo-European root *der-, to tear apart. The eye-water noun is a separate Old English word, tear, from a different root entirely. They arrived at the same spelling by accident and have never merged in meaning or in sound.
Proto-Indo-European
*der- — to tear, tear apart
Proto-Germanic
*teraną — to tear, tear apart, rip
Old English
teran — to tear, lacerate
Middle English
teren
English, today
tear
From Middle English teren, from Old English teran (“to tear, lacerate”), from Proto-Germanic teraną (“to tear, tear apart, rip”), from Proto-Indo-European der- (“to tear, tear apart”). Cognate with Scots tere, teir, tair (“to rend, lacerate, wound, rip, tear out”), Dutch teren (“to eliminate, efface, live, survive by consumption”), German zehren (“to consume, misuse”), German zerren (“to tug, rip, tear”), Danish tære (“to consume”), Swedish tära (“to fret, consume, deplete, use up”), Icelandic tæra (“to clear, corrode”). Outside Germanic, cognate to Ancient Greek δέρω (“to skin”), Albanian ther (“to slay, skin, pierce”). a doublet of tire.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA