Other forms: crying, cries, cried
To cry is to have tears fall from your eyes because you are sad. Cry about it, start crying, cried for hours.
It also means to shout: cry out in pain, a cry for help. As a noun, a cry is that shout, and a good cry is a British institution. Note cry over spilt milk, meaning to regret what cannot be changed; cry wolf, meaning to raise false alarms until nobody believes you; and a far cry from, meaning very different from — which comes from a distance measured by how far a shout carries.
1verbcryTo have tears fall from your eyes.
“The baby started to cry because she was hungry.”
2verbshoutTo shout.
“Stay calm and cry out for help if you get into trouble in the water.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
cry is a weeping or shouting.
Also accepted in games: weep
Old French crier comes from Latin quiritare, to wail — supposedly to call on the Quirites, the citizens of Rome, for help. Whether that story is true or not, the word arrived meaning to shout rather than to weep.
Vulgar Latin
*crītāre
Old French
crier
Middle English
crien
English, today
cry
The verb is from Middle English crien (13th century), from Old French crier, from Vulgar Latin crītāre, generally thought to derive from quirito (krītan has also been suggested as a source). The noun corresponds to Middle English cry, crie, from Old French cri, a deverbal of crier. 2 Middle English crien eventually displaced native Middle English galen (“to cry out”) (from Old English galan), Middle English greden (“to cry out”) (from Old English grǣdan), Middle English yermen (“to bellow, mourn, lament”) (from Old English ġierman), Middle English hoen (“to cry out”) (from Old Norse hóa), Middle English remen (“to cry, shout”) (from Old English hrīeman, compare Old English hrēam (“noise, outcry, lamentation, alarm”)), Middle English gretan (“to weep, cry, lament”) (from Old English grǣtan and Old Norse gráta). More at greet, regret.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA