crocodile tears
5
5.5
- idiom
- /ˈkrɒkəˌdaɪl tɪrz/
- Informal
:
lágrimas de cocodrilo
- Don't believe his crocodile tears; he's only pretending to be sad to gain sympathy.
- cry crocodile tears
- shed crocodile tears
I went, oh, sugar, I said no, mum, that's crocodile tears.
- I went, oh, sugar, I said no, mum, that's crocodile tears.
Examples
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Don't listen to his crocodile tears.
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Conservatives always cry crocodile tears over deficits.
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And then every four years you get this sort of crocodile tears for the poor people because they need their vote.
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Now, put away the crocodile tears.
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And your crocodile tears fool no one.
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I think it's unfair to call these crocodile tears.
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So don't cry those crocodile tears.
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We have had lots of warm words, hand wringing and some crocodile tears both from the Prime Minister and Ministers in this Chamber.
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I don’t want those crocodile tears on my shoes.
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Recently, the UN shed crocodile tears about the sufferings of the Tamils and the genocidal war that passed through their homeland.
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How Sincere
443
2.1
6
5.2
273
1.8
116
3.7
- Informal
5
5.5
71
4.6
Surface Forms
Morphology
crocodile + tears
Although 'tears' signals sadness, the addition of 'crocodile' does not transparently signal insincerity to a B1 learner who only knows the literal meanings; the idiomatic sense (feigned sorrow) relies on cultural/figurative knowledge about crocodiles that is not predictable from the parts. While many languages have a similar idiom, that cross-linguistic presence is cultural knowledge rather than compositional semantics, so the phrase is not derivable by learners from the constituents alone.
Etymology
The idiom crocodile tears may come from an old story that crocodiles shed tears while eating their prey, as if they were sorry. So today crocodile tears means showing 'fake' sadness or pretending to be sorry when you are not.