The word 'cry' has a split personality in Modern English, meaning both 'to call out loudly' and 'to shed tears' — but these two meanings are not original equals. The shouting sense is centuries older, and the weeping sense is a later English development that has no parallel in the word's French or Latin ancestors. The history of 'cry' is the history of a word that slowly invaded the emotional territory of 'weep' and nearly conquered it.
'Cry' entered English from Old French 'crier' (to cry out, to shout, to proclaim publicly) in the early thirteenth century. The Old French word descends from Vulgar Latin *critāre, a frequentative or intensive form of Latin 'quirītāre' (to wail, to shriek, to call upon the Quirites for help). The 'Quirites' were the Roman citizens in their civilian capacity — 'quirītāre' was literally the act of shouting 'Help, citizens!' in the streets, an appeal to the Roman public for intervention. It was
From this Roman civic institution, the word passed through Vulgar Latin and Old French with the generalized meaning of 'to shout, to call out.' A 'town crier' — the official who proclaimed news in public — preserves the original shouting sense perfectly. 'A cry for help,' 'a battle cry,' 'a far cry from' — all these uses reflect the word's origin as a shout, not a sob.
The weeping sense — 'to cry' meaning 'to shed tears' — developed in English during the sixteenth century, probably through the intermediate meaning 'to cry out in grief.' A person crying out in anguish might also be weeping, and over time the tears displaced the sound as the word's primary reference. This semantic shift is an English innovation — French 'crier,' Spanish 'gritar,' and Italian 'gridare' all mean 'to shout' but not 'to weep.'
As 'cry' expanded into the territory of weeping, it gradually displaced the native English word 'weep' (from Old English 'wēpan,' from Proto-Germanic *wōpijaną). In modern everyday English, 'cry' is the default word for shedding tears: 'The baby is crying,' 'She cried all night.' 'Weep' has retreated to formal, literary, and biblical registers: 'Jesus wept,' 'weeping willows.' This displacement is nearly complete in American English but
The compound 'outcry' (a strong public expression of protest) dates from the fourteenth century. 'Decry' (to publicly denounce) comes from French 'décrier.' 'A far cry' (a long distance, a great difference) dates from the seventeenth century, originally meaning 'the distance a shout can carry.' 'Cry wolf' (to raise a false alarm) alludes to Aesop's fable of the boy who cried wolf, rendered