a. [f. TEAR sb.1 + -LESS.] Void of tears; shedding no tears, not weeping.
1603. North, Plutarch (1612), 1123. This dayes iourney was called for them the tearelesse battell.
1591. Sylvester, Du Bartas, I. ii. 879. Canst thou tear-lesse gaze … on that prodigious blaze, That hairy Comet?
1743. Shenstone, Elegies, xix. Ye saw with tearless eye When your feet perish’d on the Punic wave.
1868. Lynch, Rivulet, CXXXII. v. A star, that … Shines … to point thy way On to the tearless country bright.
Hence Tearlessly adv., in a tearless manner, without weeping; Tearlessness, the quality or condition of being tearless.
1853. C. Brontë, Villette, xxx. He watched tearlessly.
1894. Westm. Gaz., 1 March, 3/1. What could be more … tearlessly pathetic?
1909. H. Hagedorn, Forgiveness, 9, in A Troop of the Guard, etc. 39.
| Thou wilt forgive the anguish and the tears, | |
| And worse than tears, the arid tearlessness, | |
| When Time turns round each grain of the shifting sand. |
