Tears are secretions that clean and lubricate the eyes. Lacrimation or lachrymation (from Latin lacrima, meaning "tear") is the production or shedding of tears.
Strong emotions such as sorrow or elation, awe, pleasure, irritation of the eyes, laughing, and yawning may lead to an increased production of tears, or crying.
Read more about Tears: Physiology, Drainage of Tear Film, Types, Diseases and Disorders, Social Aspects, Chemicals in Tears
Famous quotes containing the word tears:
“I passed a tomb among green shades
Where seven anemones with down-dropped heads
Wept tears of dew upon the stone beneath.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“Wasn’t marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded. Wasn’t it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt?”
—Edna Ferber (1887–1968)
“In the present age, alas! our pens are ravished by unlettered authors and unmannered critics, that make a havoc rather than a building, a wilderness rather than a garden. But, alack! what boots it to drop tears upon the preterit?”
—Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898)