Word.ws English Dictionary

cry down

cry down verb: publicly to forbid or suppress (something).

Verb

cry down (third-person singular simple present cries down, present participle crying down, simple past and past participle cried down)

  1. (archaic, transitive) Publicly to forbid or suppress (something).
  2. (archaic, idiomatic, transitive) To condemn, disparage.
    • ‘I, for my part, don't want to cry Sir Robert down, though he does not deal at my shop.’1792, Charlotte Smith, Desmond, Broadview, published 2001, page 346
    Synonyms:
    downcry
  3. (transitive) To silence or overcome (somebody) by crying more loudly or forcefully.
    • “The first time I saw him, I, too, was appalled. They cried me down.”1911, Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes, Penguin Classics, published 2007, page 313
  4. (idiomatic, intransitive) To cry until it is tired.

Synonyms of cry down

Forms of cry down

third-person singular presentcries down
present participlecrying down
past participlecried down
pastcried down

Questions about cry down

What does cry down mean?
Cry down means publicly to forbid or suppress (something).
What part of speech is cry down?
Cry down is a verb.
What is the past tense of cry down?
The past tense of cry down is cried down.

Words near cry down in the dictionary

  1. cry blue murder
  2. cry buckets
  3. cry carrots and turnips
  4. cry craven
  5. cry cupboard
  6. cry down
  7. cry for help
  8. cry foul
  9. cry from the housetop
  10. cry from the housetops
  11. cry from the rooftop

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cry down (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-cry down.ogg.

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