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All the words just say cry. I want to find a word that means crying as in crying tears, but all I see are words for war cry and crying out.

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    Interesting question about the nuances of meaning. Could you tell us which verbs you have been looking at?
    – Cerberus
    May 4, 2020 at 15:26
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    Can you also mention what material you are using? Are you using an online Latin dictionary of some kind or something else? We can't help much unless you provide more context. Don't be afraid of writing several paragraphs of text; asking a clear question often takes that.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    May 4, 2020 at 15:41
  • Just been looking at wordhippo.com/what-is/the/… and looking them up on wiktionary. May 4, 2020 at 15:59

3 Answers 3

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lacrimāt-, past participial stem of lacrimāre to weep

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    Welcome to the site! Can you explain your answer further? How does this answer relate to the question that was asked?
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    May 4, 2020 at 15:46
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It's a bit silly, but you have to remember that most Latin-English dictionaries are somewhat archaic in their writing. So depending which dictionary WordHippo is backed by, you may have to try a few different English synonyms, especially fancier-sounding or more literary ones.

The verb I'd recommend is lacrimāre, which Lewis and Short (one of the classic dictionaries) define as:

To shed tears, to weep (syn[onyms]: fleo, ploro; class[ically attested]).

So the easiest way to find it, if your tool is drawing from L&S, is to search for "weep" instead of "cry".

I can also recommend Whitaker's Words as a good way to find Latin equivalents to English words, which does a bit better when given "cry".

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    I suspect that in the 19th century the sense “weep” was still considered to be less correct or of a lower register. Note how Noah Webster only mentions it in passing among numerous meanings that are all essentially the same (and curiously remarks that it is “a popular use of the word”). May 4, 2020 at 20:53
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You mentioned that you are using Wiktionary and Wordhippo as dictionaries. Unfortunately neither of them is very good. A good dictionary would not only explain the translations but also give enough information to find all the forms of the word. A single headword is not enough. Wiktionary is the better one of the two.

Our site has a list of freely available online Latin dictionaries. For a beginner I would suggest Numen, the Latin lexicon. It has very simple search features (the tabs "search" and "english ⇒ latin") and every word card has a link "See the complete paradigm" which will show you all the forms.

The dictionary seems to be computer-generated from three dictionaries, and the conversion to their format has introduced some errors. But they are few enough to disregard in the beginning. As you advance in Latin, the other dictionaries in the list might become more appealing.

Unfortunately many Latin dictionaries use somewhat old English, and the English word you'd need here is not "cry" but "weep". You can use the English to Latin search tool I mentioned, type in "weep", and take a look at the options it suggests. They seem to be mostly the verbs lacrimo, fleo, ploro, lacrimor, and prefixed versions of these.

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