weep

English

Pronunciation

  • enPR: wēp, IPA(key): /wiːp/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -iːp

Etymology 1

From Middle English wepen, from Old English wēpan (“to weep, complain, bewail, mourn over, deplore”), from Proto-West Germanic *wōpijan, from Proto-Germanic *wōpijaną (“to weep”), from Proto-Indo-European *weh₂b- (“to call, cry, complain”).

Cognate with Scots wepe, weip (“to weep”), Saterland Frisian wapia (“to cry, complain”), Icelandic æpa (“to yell, shout”), Proto-Slavic *vъpiti (“to weep”).

Verb

weep (third-person singular simple present weeps, present participle weeping, simple past and past participle wept or (poetic, otherwise nonstandard) weeped)

  1. To cry; to shed tears, especially when accompanied with sobbing or other difficulty speaking, as an expression of emotion such as sadness or joy.
  2. To lament; to complain.
  3. To give off moisture in small quantities, e.g. due to condensation.
    1. (medicine, of a wound or sore) To produce secretions.
    2. To flow in drops; to run in drops.
      a weeping spring, which discharges water slowly
  4. To hang the branches, as if in sorrow; to be pendent; to droop; said of a plant or its branches.
    • 1893, Edward William Cole, The best song book in the world, page 314:
      The willows weep and the moonbeams sleep / On the mariner's silent grave.
  5. (obsolete, transitive) To weep over; to bewail.
    • 1717, Matthew Prior, The Dove:
      Fair Venus wept the sad disaster
      Of having lost her favorite dove.
    • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XIII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 20:
      […] Which weep a loss for ever new,
      ⁠A void where heart on heart reposed;
      ⁠And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
      Silence, till I be silent too.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations

Noun

weep (plural weeps)

  1. A session of crying.
    Sometimes you just have to have a good weep.
  2. A sob.
    • 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, New York: Doubleday & McClure, published 1899, page v. 62:
      He's coming, too, and we both want to mingle our weeps over the wine-cup[.]
  3. A red or reddish liquid that seeps out from raw muscular meat during storage, consisting mostly of water and protein; "meat juice".
    Synonym: purge

Etymology 2

Imitative of its cry.

Noun

weep (plural weeps)

  1. A lapwing; wipe, especially, a northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus).
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