weep

• enPR: wēp, IPA^(key): /wiːp/

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• Rhymes: -iːp

From Middle English wepen, from Old English wēpan (“to weep, complain, bewail, mourn over, deplore”), 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 weeped)

1. To cry; shed tears.
   • Longfellow

     They wept together in silence.

2. To lament; to complain.
   • Bible, Numbers xi. 13

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

3. (medicine, of a wound or sore) To produce secretions.
4. To flow in drops; to run in drops.

   a weeping spring, which discharges water slowly

   • Shakespeare

     The blood weeps from my heart.

5. To hang the branches, as if in sorrow; to be pendent; to droop; said of a plant or its branches.
6. (obsolete, transitive) To weep over; to bewail.
   • Prior

     Fair Venus wept the sad disaster / Of having lost her favorite dove.

• See also Thesaurus:weep

weep (plural weeps)

1. A session of crying.

   Sometimes you just have to have a good weep.

Imitative of its cry.

weep (plural weeps)

1. The lapwing; the wipe.