crocodile tears
UK/ˈkɹɒkədaɪl ˌtɪəz/US/ˈkɹɑkədaɪl ˌtɪɹz/
crocodile tears is the plural of crocodile tear.
Meaning of crocodile tear
Noun
crocodile tear (plural crocodile tears)
- A tear shed insincerely, in a false display of sorrow or some other emotion.
- At last he contrived to squeeze out one of his little hysterical tears, and drop it on her hand. Now, the girl was not butter, like some of her sex; far from it: but neither was she wood—indeed, she was not old enough for that—so this crocodile tear won her for the time being.1877, Charles Reade, chapter 2, in A Woman-Hater
- A display of tears that is forced or false.
- And in all her letters since, she had spoken of her aunt as a silly, vain, worldly woman, weeping crocodile tears, for an old husband whose death had released her from the tedium of his company.1864, Anthony Trollope, chapter 19, in Can You Forgive Her?
Questions about crocodile tears
- What is crocodile tears the plural of?
- Crocodile tears is the plural of crocodile tear.
- How do you pronounce crocodile tears?
- Crocodile tears is pronounced /ˈkɹɒkədaɪl ˌtɪəz/ (UK).
Words near crocodile tears in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: crocodile tears (page history and authors); crocodile tear (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-crocodile tears.ogg.
Cite this entry: “crocodile tears.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crocodile_tears. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.