The word 'tear' represents a fascinating case of homonymy in English, where two distinct ancient roots converged into identical modern spellings. The noun, meaning a drop from the eye, descends from the Old English tēar, which is traced back through Proto-Germanic tahrą to the Proto-Indo-European root dáḱru-, also the source for Latin lacrima and Greek dákry. The verb, meaning to rip apart, comes from the Old English teran, from Proto-Germanic teraną, ultimately from the PIE root der- meaning "to split, flay, tear." Their phonetic merger in Modern English is a historical accident, creating a word pair whose shared spelling belies their completely separate etymological journeys from the ancient Indo-European language family.

This is a simplex word of Old English origin. The two distinct meanings (eye liquid and to rip) originate from two separate, homographic Old English verbs: tēar (noun, meaning "tear from the eye") and teran (verb, meaning "to tear, rend").