weep

• enPR: wēp, IPA^(key): /wiːp/

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -iːp

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”).

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.
   • 1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, part I:

     They wept together in silence.

2. To lament; to complain.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Numbers 11:13:

     They weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may eat.

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

      • c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:

        The blood weeps from my heart.

4. To hang the branches, as if in sorrow; to be pendent; to droop; said of a plant or its branches.
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], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XIII, 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.

• See also Thesaurus:weep

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

Imitative of its cry.

weep (plural weeps)

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