I. noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a banging/tearing/hissing etc sound
▪
There was an odd buzzing sound in her ears.
be bored to tears/to death (= extremely bored )
▪
Rob was bored to tears trailing around the shops.
bore sb to death/tears (= make them very bored )
break/cut/tear sth in half (= into two equal pieces )
▪
He tore the paper in half.
break/tear down barriers
▪
Most companies have broken down the old barriers of status among the workers.
burst into tears
▪
Claire looked as if she were about to burst into tears .
choked back tears
▪
He choked back tears as he described what had happened.
eyes filled up with tears
▪
Her eyes filled up with tears .
eyes filled with tears
▪
Her eyes filled with tears .
fighting back...tears
▪
She looked away, fighting back her tears .
forced back...tears
▪
Janet forced back her tears .
helpless laughter/rage/tears etc
▪
We both collapsed into helpless giggles.
hold back...tears
▪
She struggled to hold back her tears .
keep back the tears
▪
She was struggling to keep back the tears .
laugh till you cry/laugh till the tears run down your face
▪
He leaned back in his chair and laughed till the tears ran down his face.
moved...to tears
▪
His speech moved the audience to tears .
near tears
▪
A lot of the women were near tears .
on the verge of tears
▪
Jess seemed on the verge of tears .
prickled with tears
▪
My eyes prickled with tears .
pull down/knock down/tear down a building
▪
All the medieval buildings were torn down.
rip/tear sth to bits
▪
She grabbed the letter and ripped it to bits.
sb’s eyes are full of tears
▪
When she put the phone down, her eyes were full of tears.
tear gas (= a gas that stings your eyes, used by the police to control crowds )
▪
Police using tear gas had clashed with protestors.
tear gas
▪
The police used tear gas to break up the demonstration.
tear/rip open an envelope (= open it quickly and roughly )
▪
My fingers trembled as I tore open the envelope.
tear/rip sth to shreds
▪
The clothes were ripped to shreds and covered in blood.
tears of joy
▪
She began to cry again, but they were tears of joy.
tears of rage
▪
Her eyes were now full of tears of rage.
tears well up
▪
I felt tears well up in my eyes.
tore...ligament
▪
He tore a ligament in his left knee.
weep tears
▪
She wept bitter tears of self-reproach.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
hot
▪
In age she recollected the sensation of hot tears mixing with cold rain.
▪
She groaned, as hot tears welled up and wetted both their faces.
▪
Pictures of her parents, memories, flashed through her mind bringing hot scalding tears to her eyes.
▪
A second after I gave him that answer, I felt a flood of hot , salty tears gush down my cheeks.
▪
A sprinkling of hot tears fell on to his exploring lips.
▪
He grimaced, as hot tears gushed from his eyes.
▪
D'Arcy's grip tightened round her shoulders as he felt her hot tears against his skin.
▪
Through a fog of hot tears and slick blood I heard words that at once sounded distant and entirely too close.
■ NOUN
crocodile
▪
You will notice phrases like crocodile tears , the elephant never forgets, and the ostrich burying its head in the sand.
▪
That is why we should regard Labour's albeit genuine crocodile tears as extremely salty.
gas
▪
Riot police ringed the building and fired tear gas at the crowd.
▪
Charlie mixed in some tear gas with the mine.
▪
Hundreds were hospitalized suffering from the effects of tear gas .
▪
A tear gas canister fatally wounded one young demonstrator.
▪
The Washington police fired tear gas at them and the gas was blown at once across the White House garden.
▪
The Army moved in with a water cannon and tear gas , forcing the marchers into hasty retreat.
▪
Bhutto was choked by tear gas earlier when police fired canisters directly at her open-top jeep.
▪
On Sept. 17 reports stated that tear gas was used to halt protests at a Mandalay high school.
■ VERB
blink
▪
She needed to blink away tears .
▪
For a moment the two strangers just stood there holding hands and blinking back their tears .
▪
When she blinked , the tears overflowed and ran back along her cheekbones to her ears, where the swaddling absorbed them.
▪
Touching the welt, Howard tried to blink back tears before going inside.
▪
She blinked away a tear and nodded.
▪
She blinked back the tears and made a fanfare out of unwrapping the gift.
▪
Claudia opened her eyes and blinked away the tears .
▪
I noticed that his hands were trembling slightly, and he seemed to be blinking back tears .
cry
▪
He wanted to cry , but the tears froze on his face.
▪
I cried till the tears all run down in my ears.
▪
I remember crying sentimental tears a few years later in 1987 when I watched on television Neil Kinnock's party political broadcast.
▪
When my sister was upset, she would cry and great piteous tears would roll from her eyes.
▪
Sarah tried to cry and no tears would come.
▪
Yoshimoto, however, is a legitimate storyteller, and avoids the overwrought sentiment that forces a reader to cry unwilling tears .
▪
That night, alone in the room with the coffins, Oliver cried bitter, lonely tears .
fight
▪
It was still tender from the soldier's abuse, but the pain helped her fight back incipient tears .
▪
I find myself fighting back tears as I thank them for coming.
▪
Desperately she fought back the tears , not knowing why they had formed so swiftly.
▪
Shareef Abdur-Rahim fought back tears throughout his statement and parts of the question-and-answer period that followed.
▪
Breathing deeply, fighting sudden fresh tears , she stared at the whitewashed walls of the tiny, tidy yard.
▪
In fact, the chance to show Neely fighting back tears probably became an excuse to return to the topic.
▪
None of it registered, because she was fighting tears that were perilously near.
shed
▪
No doubt I will shed many tears today, as I do every day.
▪
He even shed a few tears .
▪
He shed tears the way a flower sheds petals, they fell to the ground, lay scattered round his feet.
▪
The boys shed a lot of tears as they told police what happened, Capt.
▪
Equally, none of them looked like they'd shed too many tears .
▪
And you may shed a tear or two - for the sheer joy of it all.
▪
But shed no tears for Morris.
weep
▪
And I wouldn't weep tears over it, either.
▪
Spitting icicles and weeping tears of frost, the crucified one wrenched at his adamantine bolts.
▪
Then I began to weep , howling with tears .
▪
Whatever the reason, she wept , heartbroken tears that were almost silent but which tore her apart.
▪
Finally to let her mind slip free of all this chaos, turn her face to the wall and weep slow tears .
▪
You hold the world at arms length while Your heart weeps tears but your lips smile.
▪
There are hundreds of reports of miraculous statues of Mary weeping real tears: some are reported to weep blood.
▪
So she fell upon his grey hairy neck, weeping bright tears .
wipe
▪
She wiped away a tear that had crept unnoticed on to her cheek.
▪
He lifted his hands to wipe away the tears and saw dark brown slime.
▪
Sandoz was, by this time, wiping tears from his eyes and making terrible whining sounds.
▪
His laughter now was ecstatic; he wiped away tears .
▪
She wiped away her tears and glanced around cautiously to see if anyone were staring at her.
▪
I am in it for the side of labor that brings us all together and that wipes away every tear .
▪
Hesitantly, Victoria stood up, wiping the tears off her cheeks with the back of her hands.
▪
I wiped the tears away and shut down the Huey.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a/the/this vale of tears
▪
The world is a vale of tears, a giant ball of dung.
▪
We all know what next occurred-and here we all are, in this vale of tears.
be cut/torn to ribbons
▪
Her feet were cut to ribbons on the rocks.
be torn apart
▪
Before their lives were torn apart , they were a happy family.
▪
He was torn apart as health and social security secretary and suffered demotion before resigning.
▪
He would be torn apart by the difference between the gravitational force on his head and his feet.
▪
In practice instruments could not survive such a journey; they would be torn apart by the increasing gravitational field gradients.
▪
Parents who objected were torn apart as heretics.
▪
The political structures were torn apart until the very foundations were rocked.
▪
The spaceship would be torn apart by infinitely strong forces.
▪
We have players in the league whose families, let alone countries, are torn apart by war.
be torn/split/rent etc asunder
▪
If the momentum picks up, conventional politics could be torn asunder .
▪
In 1964, the Republican Party was torn asunder by the nomination of conservative Barry Goldwater.
▪
The veils are parting, the mists are rent asunder .
▪
This unity was to be rent asunder by changes in technology and by the impact of the Modern Movement in architecture.
blind with tears/rage/pain etc
▪
She turned her back again, her shoulders heaving, her eyes blind with tears.
blink back/away tears
▪
I noticed that his hands were trembling slightly, and he seemed to be blinking back tears.
▪
She needed to blink away tears.
▪
Touching the welt, Howard tried to blink back tears before going inside.
blood, sweat, and tears
bring tears to sb's eyes
▪
His dumb loyalty brought tears to my eyes.
▪
Just remembering it brings tears to my eyes 20 years later.
▪
The pain of the short trip brought tears to my eyes.
▪
The thought of his wasting all that training brought tears to my eyes.
▪
The tune moved through her mind and body, bringing tears to her eyes.
▪
The very word brings tears to your eyes.
▪
They brought tears to her eyes, but tears of pain soon welled up from an overwhelming sense of despair.
▪
This unexpected kindness brings tears to my eyes.
crocodile tears
▪
But far be it for us to shed crocodile tears over the bruised egos of our male counterparts.
▪
So much for the exiles' crocodile tears over Elian's removal.
▪
That is why we should regard Labour's albeit genuine crocodile tears as extremely salty.
▪
They weep crocodile tears for the poor and disadvantaged, but are basically happy with things as they are.
▪
You will notice phrases like crocodile tears, the elephant never forgets, and the ostrich burying its head in the sand.
dissolve into/in laughter/tears etc
▪
Francis and Christopher dissolved in laughter, lapped theirs up and declared it very good.
▪
If he mentioned moving out of her parents' house, she dissolved into tears.
▪
Katherine threw herself against Gary and dissolved into tears.
▪
The waiter bowed and retreated, Stephen and Lily dissolved into laughter.
▪
When at last she is alone, her sorrow overwhelms her and she dissolves in tears.
in floods of tears
▪
I was in floods of tears.
▪
It was surprising that she did not feel embarrassed at being caught in floods of tears.
▪
Jane departed in floods of tears and Rosemary duly arrived, in a very bad temper.
it'll (all) end in tears
pull/rip/tear sb/sth to pieces
▪
And having got under them, he can't half tear them to pieces .
▪
Brandon Thomas opted to unveil his Aunt away from London fearful that the capital's theatre critics would tear it to pieces .
▪
He was thrown from his chariot and his horses tore him to pieces and devoured him.
▪
I had been given the power to obliterate, to steal a body from its grave and tear it to pieces .
▪
If Hyde returns while I am writing this confession, he will tear it to pieces to annoy me.
▪
They will tear you to pieces .
▪
We are lost, for they will surely tear us to pieces with their sharp claws.
reduce sb to tears/silence etc
▪
At mealtimes, Kornemann would rail at his wife in front of the boys, reducing her to tears.
▪
He has in his grasp the ability to reduce anyone to tears, through a snappy headline or lurid story.
▪
Initially, it was the existential absurdity of his predicament that reduced Sooty to silence.
▪
It becomes the subject of innumerable short stories and songs, of films that reduce their audiences to tears.
▪
Outside in her car she kept a tight grip on herself, refusing to let her humiliation reduce her to tears.
▪
She would come home in tears and reduce my wife to tears.
▪
They might stop me having visitors if they think I reduce them to tears.
see sth through a mist of tears
shed tears
▪
I imagine a few tears will be shed at Monica's farewell party.
▪
As the train drew out our dear friends on the platform blew kisses, shed tears and waved their handkerchiefs.
▪
He shed tears the way a flower sheds petals, they fell to the ground, lay scattered round his feet.
▪
I had persevered, and I shed tears more in relief than in pain.
▪
Likewise, when she shed tears for her son, she did it when she was alone.
▪
Richard Simmons sheds tears over them.
▪
She wouldn't shed tears over that ... that brute.
▪
While women were increasingly associated with weakness and emotion, by 1860 men no longer dared embrace in public or shed tears.
smash/rip/tear sth to pieces
▪
And having got under them, he can't half tear them to pieces .
▪
Brandon Thomas opted to unveil his Aunt away from London fearful that the capital's theatre critics would tear it to pieces .
▪
He was thrown from his chariot and his horses tore him to pieces and devoured him.
▪
I had been given the power to obliterate, to steal a body from its grave and tear it to pieces .
▪
If Hyde returns while I am writing this confession, he will tear it to pieces to annoy me.
▪
Telling me the strangest things sometimes, evil things - till I want to shout out or smash them to pieces .
▪
We are lost, for they will surely tear us to pieces with their sharp claws.
tear/rip sth to shreds
▪
And the politicians, thank goodness, have only so much money with which to rip each other to shreds .
▪
Its springtime for President Bill Clinton as he watches his Republican challengers rip each other to shreds .
▪
Other than the chance to rip it to shreds .
▪
The agony of such a torment would tear her to shreds .
▪
They didn't have a humidifier and it's torn my voice to shreds .
▪
They snarled at them as if they were criminals and took their papers as if they'd like to tear them to shreds .
▪
They would have torn Corbett to shreds if the grille had been raised.
▪
Within two years, other researchers had torn it to shreds .
tears spring to/into sb's eyes
▪
Joy went crimson and tears sprang into her eyes.
▪
With that avowal, tears sprang to her eyes, leaving Farini nonplussed.
tug/tear/pull at sb's heartstrings
▪
It pulls at the heartstrings of every agent out there to see a young lady or anyone jeopardized by these conditions.
▪
That night the little creature did not stop crying and its pitiful little squeak tore at Aggie's heartstrings .
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
tear -stained cheeks
▪
How did you get that tear in your jacket?
▪
Is that a tear on your face?
▪
There's a small tear near the corner of the painting.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
He had had visions, striding back to Bedford Square, of proper love-making, of tenderness, perhaps some tears.
▪
His parents' faces turn ashen when they first see him, then they smile through their tears.
▪
I remember it as if I were still standing there, streaked with blood and dust and tears, talking to her.
▪
I snarled, Josefina added terror to her tears and somehow we got through.
▪
Its last 15 minutes had me right where the filmmakers wanted me, which was in tears.
▪
This time was no different and my master left Syon with the tears streaming down his face.
II. verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
apart
▪
Same kind of bloody pain - like people being torn apart .
▪
Numerous nations have not only experienced external threats, but have been torn apart by internal struggle as well.
▪
The play portrays a good marriage torn apart by external forces.
▪
Then suddenly the landmass tears apart .
▪
Indeed, it became increasingly torn apart by sectarian and ideological division.
▪
Ministers lost status and irritated each other as diverse populations tore apart the unity of originally close-knit old towns.
▪
But instead he was feeling torn apart by his own emotions.
▪
The wind began howling as if it were a living thing some one was tearing apart in the sky above them.
asunder
▪
If the momentum picks up, conventional politics could be torn asunder .
▪
In 1964, the Republican Party was torn asunder by the nomination of conservative Barry Goldwater.
▪
Now their raging passions looked like tearing asunder one of the strongest rigs in the North Sea.
▪
All told, the cradle of civilization has been tearing asunder for some 30 million years.
away
▪
His young hair and this old flag tearing away at the back of him.
▪
To help Dern, Redgrave has to tear away some serious layers of denial.
▪
And before Jezrael started to react Zuleika lifted one hand to tear away her fountain of black shiny-rippled hair.
▪
She tore away the strap that kept the helmet on so that it came away in Menelaus' hand.
▪
Fine fabrics are more easily stitched when tacked to tissue paper, which can be torn away afterwards.
▪
He watched a young man hobbling up a trail, one foot torn away at the ankle.
▪
The mouth and chin had been torn away and the jaw broken.
▪
Waves up to 30 feet tore away the beachfront of the Huatulco Sheraton and other bays, leaving tree limbs scattered everywhere.
down
▪
Omonia supporters chased the ref off the pitch, then tore down the steel dressing-room doors.
▪
He ordered two barracks torn down and a fountain constructed on the cement base of a latrine.
▪
Forays had been made at night; scaffolding had been torn down and a few workers employed in building Carewscourt had been killed.
▪
Some of the oldest blocks had already been torn down with the promise that new, moderate-income housing would be put up.
▪
Robertsbridge, the great Cistercian house, disappeared entirely, torn down by the local people.
▪
One homeowner appealed to the city for help to tear down her house.
▪
He'd tear down the walls.
▪
Thousands of other business buildings and homes have been strengthened or, in some cases, torn down as unsafe.
off
▪
The knots took some undoing and then finally an impatient Adam tore off the string before slowly removing the muslin.
▪
You could tear off little pieces and light it, and it would burn.
▪
He tore off the page of notes and thrust it into his pocket.
▪
The reel began to screech in protest as a fine trout tore off into the distance, leaping spectacularly along the way.
▪
She took the paper from him so violently that she tore off the corner.
▪
The perforated slips are then torn off and placed in the pay envelopes of the employees.
▪
Unable to master the lid lock, she tears off the pull-tab.
open
▪
Frantically she tore open the door to Elinor's apartment.
▪
He tore open the cupboard door and peered at the tiny porthole of glass on the front of the central heating boiler.
▪
She tore open the envelope, ignoring the paper knife Penman laid ready for her each day.
▪
Puzzled, he tore open the envelope.
▪
With his left hand he tore open the tunic of his uniform and drew up the undershirt, baring the flesh.
▪
Magee tore open the driver's door, grabbing the man by the shoulder, hauling him from the cab.
▪
Some one else had been here before him, tearing open the bags of perishables in search of anything worthy of rescue.
▪
If I have to tear open the cages with my hands, I shall rescue him.
■ NOUN
clothes
▪
Everything he wore had to be thick, because he tore his clothes , destroyed them.
▪
If he had tried to tear the clothes from her, she probably wouldn't - couldn't - have stopped him.
▪
She would bite herself, bite anybody, and tear her clothes off.
▪
He looked ready to tear his clothes apart.
▪
Once the soldiers pushed a woman down on the floor in front of the partition and tore at her clothes .
dress
▪
One held me as the other tore my dress and then the pale flesh under.
▪
She fell into another and tore her new red dress .
ligament
▪
While appearing with them in Berlin in 1937 she tore a ligament and had to give up further hope of dancing.
▪
The tissue surrounds the torn ligaments that have limited his minutes and effectiveness in the past month.
▪
This tore the ligaments that had been repaired five months ago.
▪
His primary replacement, Junior Bryant, is questionable with a torn ligament in his right elbow.
▪
The 27-year-old Oldham keeper is likely to be out for the rest of the season after tearing wrist ligaments against Manchester United.
▪
Jurkovic suffered a torn medial collateral ligament in his left knee and missed the rest of the game.
▪
Spring focus: 2B Craig Biggio says he feels fine, but he is coming off surgery for two torn knee ligaments .
▪
He had been released by the Bullets and had missed the entire season because of a torn anterior cruciate ligament .
paper
▪
The police were called, after which Bradley started to tear up the paper bags which were on the counter.
▪
She tore the tissue paper , and tore it again until she could see what was there, nestled in her hand.
▪
She tore the tissue paper off and held up a little polythene envelope, with two silver fist-in-a-bag ear-rings inside.
▪
This rolling action can reduce the tendency to tear the paper .
▪
The point tore through the paper .
▪
She tore away the tissue paper and threw the dresses over the sofa.
▪
He tore up the paper and burned the scraps in an ashtray.
▪
I tore the paper off the chocolate and bit off a chunk.
strip
▪
Raising his tracksuit top, he tore a strip from the exposed white T-shirt underneath.
▪
Then I destroyed them, sometimes tearing them into little strips , sometimes burning them.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a/the/this vale of tears
▪
The world is a vale of tears, a giant ball of dung.
▪
We all know what next occurred-and here we all are, in this vale of tears.
be cut/torn to ribbons
▪
Her feet were cut to ribbons on the rocks.
be tearing/pulling your hair out
▪
Anyone else would be tearing his hair out, confronted by a pack of jabbering foreigners, but does Feargal?
▪
I was pulling my hair out.
be torn apart
▪
Before their lives were torn apart , they were a happy family.
▪
He was torn apart as health and social security secretary and suffered demotion before resigning.
▪
He would be torn apart by the difference between the gravitational force on his head and his feet.
▪
In practice instruments could not survive such a journey; they would be torn apart by the increasing gravitational field gradients.
▪
Parents who objected were torn apart as heretics.
▪
The political structures were torn apart until the very foundations were rocked.
▪
The spaceship would be torn apart by infinitely strong forces.
▪
We have players in the league whose families, let alone countries, are torn apart by war.
be torn/split/rent etc asunder
▪
If the momentum picks up, conventional politics could be torn asunder .
▪
In 1964, the Republican Party was torn asunder by the nomination of conservative Barry Goldwater.
▪
The veils are parting, the mists are rent asunder .
▪
This unity was to be rent asunder by changes in technology and by the impact of the Modern Movement in architecture.
blind with tears/rage/pain etc
▪
She turned her back again, her shoulders heaving, her eyes blind with tears.
blood, sweat, and tears
crocodile tears
▪
But far be it for us to shed crocodile tears over the bruised egos of our male counterparts.
▪
So much for the exiles' crocodile tears over Elian's removal.
▪
That is why we should regard Labour's albeit genuine crocodile tears as extremely salty.
▪
They weep crocodile tears for the poor and disadvantaged, but are basically happy with things as they are.
▪
You will notice phrases like crocodile tears, the elephant never forgets, and the ostrich burying its head in the sand.
in floods of tears
▪
I was in floods of tears.
▪
It was surprising that she did not feel embarrassed at being caught in floods of tears.
▪
Jane departed in floods of tears and Rosemary duly arrived, in a very bad temper.
pull/rip/tear sb/sth to pieces
▪
And having got under them, he can't half tear them to pieces .
▪
Brandon Thomas opted to unveil his Aunt away from London fearful that the capital's theatre critics would tear it to pieces .
▪
He was thrown from his chariot and his horses tore him to pieces and devoured him.
▪
I had been given the power to obliterate, to steal a body from its grave and tear it to pieces .
▪
If Hyde returns while I am writing this confession, he will tear it to pieces to annoy me.
▪
They will tear you to pieces .
▪
We are lost, for they will surely tear us to pieces with their sharp claws.
see sth through a mist of tears
smash/rip/tear sth to pieces
▪
And having got under them, he can't half tear them to pieces .
▪
Brandon Thomas opted to unveil his Aunt away from London fearful that the capital's theatre critics would tear it to pieces .
▪
He was thrown from his chariot and his horses tore him to pieces and devoured him.
▪
I had been given the power to obliterate, to steal a body from its grave and tear it to pieces .
▪
If Hyde returns while I am writing this confession, he will tear it to pieces to annoy me.
▪
Telling me the strangest things sometimes, evil things - till I want to shout out or smash them to pieces .
▪
We are lost, for they will surely tear us to pieces with their sharp claws.
tear/rip sth to shreds
▪
And the politicians, thank goodness, have only so much money with which to rip each other to shreds .
▪
Its springtime for President Bill Clinton as he watches his Republican challengers rip each other to shreds .
▪
Other than the chance to rip it to shreds .
▪
The agony of such a torment would tear her to shreds .
▪
They didn't have a humidifier and it's torn my voice to shreds .
▪
They snarled at them as if they were criminals and took their papers as if they'd like to tear them to shreds .
▪
They would have torn Corbett to shreds if the grille had been raised.
▪
Within two years, other researchers had torn it to shreds .
tug/tear/pull at sb's heartstrings
▪
It pulls at the heartstrings of every agent out there to see a young lady or anyone jeopardized by these conditions.
▪
That night the little creature did not stop crying and its pitiful little squeak tore at Aggie's heartstrings .
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
A masked man came tearing out of the bank and jumped into a waiting car.
▪
Be careful, the paper tears easily.
▪
Bobby tore past, shouting something about being late for work.
▪
Careful - the paper is very old and tears easily.
▪
Celia grabbed the envelope and tore it open.
▪
Don't tear pages out of the book.
▪
Don't pull on the cloth, it will tear .
▪
He took my ticket and tore it in half. "Row J, seats 8 and 9."
▪
How did you tear your pocket?
▪
I tore a hole in my jacket, climbing over the fence.
▪
I tore a hole in my new blouse.
▪
I had torn the knees of my jeans on the rough gravel.
▪
Mary tore off downstairs, determined to see the visitors for herself.
▪
My jacket caught on a nail and tore.
▪
Peterson tore open the envelope.
▪
She tore a page out of her diary and wrote her phone number on it.
▪
She unwrapped the present carefully, trying not to tear the paper.
▪
The attendant tore off the parking ticket and handed it back.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
Forays had been made at night; scaffolding had been torn down and a few workers employed in building Carewscourt had been killed.
▪
He tore the envelope open, his mind full of various pleasing conjectures.
▪
He walked hesitatingly forward, his skin tensed for the feeling of metal tearing flesh.
▪
If they start building here, it will be like tearing my heart out.
▪
Martell has been torn from his wife and stepchildren.
▪
Surely tearing up the Pope's picture was meant as a symbolic gesture, not a personal affront.
▪
Worthy mentors work to build you up, not tear you down.
III. noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ VERB
weep
▪
And I wouldn't weep tears over it, either.
▪
Spitting icicles and weeping tears of frost, the crucified one wrenched at his adamantine bolts.
▪
Then I began to weep , howling with tears .
▪
Whatever the reason, she wept , heartbroken tears that were almost silent but which tore her apart.
▪
Finally to let her mind slip free of all this chaos, turn her face to the wall and weep slow tears .
▪
You hold the world at arms length while Your heart weeps tears but your lips smile.
▪
There are hundreds of reports of miraculous statues of Mary weeping real tears: some are reported to weep blood.
▪
So she fell upon his grey hairy neck, weeping bright tears .
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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He had had visions, striding back to Bedford Square, of proper love-making, of tenderness, perhaps some tears.
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His parents' faces turn ashen when they first see him, then they smile through their tears.
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I remember it as if I were still standing there, streaked with blood and dust and tears, talking to her.
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Its last 15 minutes had me right where the filmmakers wanted me, which was in tears.
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They had to use tear gas to drive off the rioters.
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This time was no different and my master left Syon with the tears streaming down his face.