WEEP


Meaning of WEEP in English

weep /wiːp/ BrE AmE verb ( past tense and past participle wept /wept/)

[ Language: Old English ; Origin: wepan ]

1 . [intransitive and transitive] formal or literary to cry, especially because you feel very sad:

James broke down and wept.

weep for

She wept for the loss of her mother.

He wept bitterly (=cried a lot) when it was time for us to leave.

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In everyday English, people usually say cry rather than weep :

She was crying all the way through the movie.

2 . I could have wept spoken used to say that you felt very disappointed about something:

I could have wept thinking what I’d missed.

3 . [intransitive] if a wound weeps, liquid comes out of it

—weep noun [singular]

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COLLOCATIONS

■ adverbs

▪ openly

Some of the mourners wept openly.

▪ bitterly (=crying hard)

I heard the sound of a woman weeping bitterly.

▪ quietly/silently

He was weeping quietly, allowing the tears to run down his cheeks.

■ nouns

▪ weep tears

She wept bitter tears of self-reproach.

▪ weep buckets informal (=produce a lot of tears)

I didn’t know if she would get well, and I wept buckets every night.

■ phrases

▪ break down and weep (=start crying)

As she watched his plane taxi away, she broke down and wept.

▪ weep and wail (=cry and make loud sad noises – often used humorously)

The baby wept and wailed all the way through the ceremony.

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THESAURUS

▪ cry to produce tears from your eyes:

Don’t cry – everything will be all right!

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Men aren’t supposed to cry.

▪ cry your eyes out especially spoken to cry a lot and for a long time:

I cried my eyes out when I watched ‘Titanic’.

▪ be in tears to be crying:

By the end of his story, we were all in tears.

▪ be close to tears to be almost crying:

You could see that she was close to tears.

▪ weep literary to cry, especially for a long time:

His mother put her head on the table and wept.

▪ sob to cry, taking sudden loud breaths:

I could hear someone sobbing in the next room.

▪ wail /weɪl/ to cry very loudly in a high voice:

The baby started wailing for its mother.

▪ whimper /ˈwɪmpə $ -ər/ to cry quietly and weakly:

She began rocking to and fro, whimpering softly.

▪ hold/fight back the tears to make a big effort not to cry:

She told her story, struggling to hold back the tears.

▪ your eyes water if your eyes water, they have tears in them, for example because of smoke, wind, or when you are cutting onions:

The onions were making my eyes water.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.      Longman - Словарь современного английского языка.