crying

Pluralcryings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of cry.

   The child sat crying softly in the corner of the room.

   Crying over the bad news, she could barely finish her sentence.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. After be it builds the progressive (she was crying). As a gerund it fills a noun slot but still behaves like a verb, taking adverbs and objects: crying softly, crying the news aloud, crying herself to sleep. That verbal behavior separates it from the noun for weeping or shouting, which takes adjectives and a plural instead, as in constant cryings.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of weeping, or of shouting and calling out loudly.

   The crying from the next room grew louder as the storm rolled in.

   All that crying left her exhausted and red-eyed by morning.

   Similarweeping, sobbing, wailing

   Note

   The noun covers two quite different noises, weeping and shouting, and only context tells you which one is meant. It is usually a mass noun (all that crying), but it also takes a plural for repeated bouts: constant cryings. The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal of 1848 lists breathings, cryings, and excretings side by side, treating each one as a bodily act.

3. 3
   adjective

   Demanding urgent action or attention; pressing to the point of desperation.

   Aid workers described a crying need for medical supplies in the camp.

   The report highlighted a crying demand for affordable housing downtown.

   Similarurgent, pressing, desperate, dire

   Note

   A need that cries out for attention: the adjective turns the verb's idea of loudly demanding notice onto a lack. It sits before its noun and is almost always met in a crying need. It also does not compare. A need is crying or it is not, never more crying. Keep it in front of the noun, because the need is crying reads as tears, not urgency.

4. 4
   adjective

   Bad enough to deserve blame or strong criticism; deplorable.

   That such talent goes unrecognized is a crying shame.

   It was a crying injustice that the workers were never paid.

   Similarterrible, deplorable, glaring, flagrant

   Note

   This meaning carries moral outrage, and it does that work mostly inside one phrase: a crying shame, often framed as "It is a crying shame that…". The adjective does not compare, so nothing is "more crying" than anything else. It is close kin to the "urgent need" meaning: a crying need calls out for action, while a crying shame calls out for blame.

5. 5
   adjective

   That weeps or sheds tears.

   She picked up the crying infant and rocked it gently.

   A crying toddler clung to her father's leg in the busy terminal.

   Similarsobbing

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