Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

wear and tear

UK/ˌwɛəɹ‿ən ˈtɛə/US/ˌwɛɹ‿ən ˈtɛ(ə)ɹ/
nounC1Not compared — the two pools are counted one word at a time, so a phrase has no score

Wear and tear is the damage that normal use does over time. Fair wear and tear.

It is excluded from most insurance and from most deposits, which is where the arguments start. Fair wear and tear is what a tenant may leave behind and damage is what they may not.

Ragesoss · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of wear and tear

  1. 1nounwear and tearThe damage that normal use does over time.C1

    “The landlord charged for wear and tear and lost the case.”

wear and tear is damage.

Where it comes from

Wear plus tear, a fixed pair since the seventeenth century.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *wes-

  2. English, today

    wear and tear

The is derived from wear + and + tear. The is derived from wear + and + tear, modelled on the noun.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Repair & Damage

Practise this word