weep
verb · noun
Simple meaning
To cry; to shed tears.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
weepIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈwip
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
To cry; to shed tears, especially when accompanied with sobbing or other difficulty speaking, as an expression of emotion such as sadness or joy.
To lament; to complain.
To flow in drops; to run in drops.
To give off moisture in small quantities, e.g. due to condensation.
To hang the branches, as if in sorrow; to be pendent; to droop; said of a plant or its branches.
noun
A session of crying.
A red or reddish liquid that seeps out from raw muscular meat during storage, consisting mostly of water and protein; "meat juice".
A lapwing; wipe, especially, a northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus).
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To cry; to shed tears, especially when accompanied with sobbing or other difficulty speaking, as an expression of emotion such as sadness or joy.
Used this way, weep is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It sounds natural in ordinary conversation and in expressive writing alike.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The process of shedding tears (usually accompanied by sobs or other inarticulate sounds).
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Perennial South African grass having densely clumped flimsy stems.
Medium-sized spruce of California and Oregon having pendulous branches.
Small shrubby tree of New Zealand having weeping branches and racemes of white to violet flowers followed by woolly indehiscent two-seeded pods.
Willow with long drooping branches and slender leaves native to China.
Variety of European beech with pendulous limbs.
Willow with long drooping branches and slender leaves native to China.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.