“The bereaved person may weep tearlessly and experience a sense of emptiness.”

“What could I say but cry silently and tearlessly with him in amazed, unquenched sorrow.”

“Sobbing tearlessly, she explained that the government had closed the local polyclinic.”

“The beast sat on its haunches and tearingly ate the hind quarters of a still-squealing little pig.”

“It's always heart tearingly hard to write the 'letters' to the families and loved ones.”

“Sporty hatchbacks, coupes and saloons would be tearfully exchanged for the bigger, sensible and practical but dull to drive estates.”

“The paranoid and self-loathing protagonist compulsively bites her hands and tearfully recalls her history of failures and indignities.”

“The son pleads guilty, tearfully begging for leniency based on his claim that his father molested him.”

“I found a pair of respectable middle-aged Englishwomen standing tearily in the Mall and asked if they had heard the historian's words.”

“Handcuffed and on the way to jail, the woman tearily admits she'd recently been raped by a black man.”

“Many cases involve a pile-up of calamities: one constituent tearily describes how immigration troubles have led to debt, repossession, repeated school moves and worse.”