Cry

How to spell cry

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cry

What does cry mean?

1. verbTo shed tears, usually because of sadness, pain, or strong emotion.
2. verbTo shout or call out loudly, often to attract attention or in distress.
3. nounA loud shout, or a spell of weeping.

Cry in a sentence

• verb

  The sad film always makes her cry.

• verb

  The drowning swimmer began to cry for help.

• noun

  A sudden cry from the next room woke the whole house.

• verb

  Newborn babies often cry when they are hungry.

• verb

  Vendors at the market cry their prices to passing shoppers.

• noun

  After a good cry she felt much calmer.

Where does cry come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English from Old French crier, meaning 'to shout, to call out', which in turn came from the Latin verb quiritare, meaning 'to wail' or 'to raise a public protest'. One charming theory traces quiritare to the idea of calling on the Quirites, the citizens of ancient Rome, for help, though scholars are not fully certain of that link. English took up the word in the 1200s, first in the sense of shouting or proclaiming something aloud, as in a town crier announcing the news. The narrower modern meaning of weeping and shedding tears grew out of that broader sense of crying out in distress. Because the word ends in a 'y' that sounds like a long 'i', adults rarely misspell it, but it does shift to 'cried' and 'crying' when inflected.

How the word is built

• cry (single root, from Latin quiritare 'to wail, to cry out'); no prefix or suffix