Word.ws English Dictionary

cry foul

cry foul verb: to protest about something which appears to be unjust.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To protest about something which appears to be unjust.

Forms of cry foul

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

Questions about cry foul

What does cry foul mean?
Cry foul means to protest about something which appears to be unjust.
What part of speech is cry foul?
Cry foul is a verb.
What is the past tense of cry foul?
The past tense of cry foul is cried foul.

Words near cry foul in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cry foul (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 foul.ogg.

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