Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Absence of tears; lack of weeping.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

tearless +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • Mrs. Colwyn passed from one hysterical fit into another, and Nora sobbed herself ill; but Janetta went about her duties with a calm and settled gravity, a sober tearlessness, which caused her stepmother to dub her cold and heartless half a dozen times a day.

    A True Friend A Novel Adeline Sergeant

  • The great quiet and the smiling tearlessness testify to the more than

    The Romance of the Milky Way And Other Studies & Stories Lafcadio Hearn 1877

  • Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop

    Moby Dick, or, the whale Herman Melville 1855

  • Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop

    Moby Dick: or, the White Whale Herman Melville 1855

  • And, in verity, you to have dear understanding with me, how that I then to be all troubled with vague troubles and ghostly love-aches in the heart; and likewise, I did be all set about in a moment by the olden enchantment and speechless glamour that did be so long hid and lost in the Spaces of Memory, where surely the spirit doth wander such oddwhiles, husht unto a dumb tearlessness and to know in the same moment both Agony and the voiceless Glory and lost Delight of the

    The Night Land 2007

  • Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of and skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards; — it is not these things alone which make tearless

    Moby Dick; or the Whale 2002

  • And, in verity, you to have dear understanding with me, how that I then to be all troubled with vague troubles and ghostly love-aches in the heart; and likewise, I did be all set about in a moment by the olden enchantment and speechless glamour that did be so long hid and lost in the Spaces of Memory, where surely the spirit doth wander such oddwhiles, husht unto a dumb tearlessness and to know in the same moment both Agony and the voiceless Glory and lost Delight of the Hath-Been; so that it doth be as that you wandered in the spirit between the sorrowful pain of the Sunset, and the Promise of the Dawn which doth be builded upon the Need and Hope of the soul, and doth also to have an essence of pain within it; because that these do be knit with Longing which doth be the essential pang of Memory.

    The Night Land: Chapter 15 1912

  • _could_ not cry, though the mother wept when she awoke, and shrieked at his tearlessness as hardhearted.

    Old Man Savarin and Other Stories Edward William Thomson 1886

  • Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas: nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope - stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards; -- it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest, saddest city thou can'st see.

    Moby-Dick, or, The Whale 1851

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