Cried

How to spell cried

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cried

What does cried mean?

1. verbShed tears, usually because of sadness, pain, or strong emotion.
2. verbCalled out or shouted something loudly.

Cried in a sentence

• She cried quietly at the back of the room.

• The vendor cried his prices to the passing crowd.

• The baby cried all night and kept the whole house awake.

• A voice from the back of the hall cried for order.

Where does cried come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of 'cry', which English took from the Old French verb crier, meaning 'to call out' or 'to shout'. That French word descends from the Latin quiritare, which meant 'to wail' or 'to scream', and may originally have meant 'to call upon the Quirites', the citizens of Rome, for help. When the word entered English in the 1200s it carried the sense of shouting or calling out loudly, and only later did it settle into its now-dominant meaning of weeping and shedding tears. The spelling trap lives in the ending: because 'cry' ends in a consonant plus 'y', that 'y' flips to 'i' before the past-tense '-ed', giving 'cried' rather than 'cryed'. The same rule shapes relatives such as 'tried', 'dried', and 'replied'.

How the word is built

• cry (from Old French crier: to call out)
• -ed (past tense; the final y becomes i before the ending)