Cries

How to spell cries

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cries

What does cries mean?

1. verbSheds tears or calls out loudly; the third-person singular form of the verb 'to cry'.
2. nounMore than one loud shout, wail, or call; the plural of the noun 'cry'.

Cries in a sentence

• verb

  The newborn cries whenever she feels hungry.

• noun

  The cries of the seagulls echoed across the empty harbour.

• verb

  He cries out in frustration every time the printer jams.

• noun

  Faint cries for help drew the rescue team toward the collapsed tunnel.

Where does cries come from?

Language of origin: French

This is an inflected form of the verb and noun 'cry', which English took from the Old French verb 'crier', meaning 'to shout out' or 'to call'. The French word in turn descends from the Latin 'quiritare', which meant 'to wail' or 'to call for help', and which some scholars connect to the idea of appealing to the Quirites, the citizens of ancient Rome. English adopted 'cry' in the 1200s, first in the sense of a loud public shout or proclamation, and only later settled into the modern meanings of weeping and of an animal's call. The spelling 'cries' follows the regular English rule that a final 'y' after a consonant turns into 'i' before the '-es' ending, which is the small step that trips writers who expect to simply add an 's'. The same shift gives us 'tries', 'flies', and 'replies'.

How the word is built

• cry (from Old French crier)
• -es (third-person singular verb ending / plural noun ending, with y changed to i)