on the brink of tears
- idiom
:
a punto de llorar
- After hearing the sad news, she was on the brink of tears.
Examples
-
During the emotional speech, he found himself on the brink of tears.
-
The ex-secretary Assane, still waving his hands, recalled the administrator as being almost on the brink of tears as he spoke:
Fiction book (1995) -
Seeing the heartfelt reunion, the audience was on the brink of tears.
Synonyms
26
1.8
Showing you are about to cry because of a strong feeling
21
2.0
Having eyes that look ready to cry
20
3.7
Feeling like you want to cry easily
9
3.2
With eyes full of tears because of strong feeling or something in the eye
8
3.0
Close to crying because you feel sad
Antonyms
How Close
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'brink' (an edge or critical point) with 'tears' (crying): 'on the brink of tears' literally conveys being at the verge of crying. This compositional, figurative use of 'brink' is common cross-linguistically and follows a standard pattern, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily understand the phrase.
Etymology
On the brink of tears uses brink to mean the very edge of something and tears for crying. Imagine standing at the edge of a cliff and almost falling; it gives the picture of being right before crying, so it means 'about to cry'.