Idioms for crying: Crocodile tears and other crying idioms explained

Crying comes in many shapes and forms, and these idioms for crying might help you with more accurate descriptions in English.

Sometimes people cry very hard; other times they just shed a few tears or try not to cry at all. You can describe all of these situations and more with the following crying idioms.

We have included definitions and example sentences to help you understand how to use these idiomatic expressions correctly.

Idioms for crying

Tear up / well up

To tear up or well up is to begin getting tears in your eyes, but not actually begin crying (yet).

“I well up every time I watch Love Actually.”
“Just hearing the story of how he proposed to her made me tear up.”

Note that this idiom for crying could refer to tears of sadness or of happiness. You can find more sadness idioms in our separate article.

Burst into tears

When someone suddenly starts crying heavily, we can say they burst into tears.

“Rubain burst into tears when she found out she had failed her test by one point.”

Cry your eyes out

To cry your eyes out is to cry very hard and for a long time. It’s one of many idioms about eyes we have in English.

“Rob cried his eyes out when his girlfriend left him.”

Laugh til you cry

Here is one of the few positive idioms about crying. Have you ever laughed so much that you shed a few tears? That’s what it means to laugh til you cry.

“Seriously, you have to watch this video. It’ll make you laugh til you cry.”

You can read some more laugh idioms here, as an antidote to all this talk of crying.

It’ll all end in tears

We use the saying it’ll all end in tears when we believe a particular situation will not end well, or any happiness will be short-lived.

“The children are playing nicely together now, but it’ll all end in tears. It always does!”
“I can’t believe Jane and Alan are getting married after only knowing each other for two months. It’ll all end in tears.”

A variation on this that you might hear used to talk about children specifically is there’ll be tears before bedtime.

In floods of tears

Someone who is in floods of tears just can’t stop crying. They are so upset they are inconsolable.

“I found my mother in floods of tears after she slipped and dropped the Thanksgiving turkey on the floor.”

Moved to tears

Someone is moved to tears when they experience such strong emotions that they want to cry.

“The ballet was so beautiful it moved me to tears.”
“I was moved to tears when I heard the news about the boy who went missing in our town.”

Again, this idiom for crying could refer to tears caused by sadness or happiness.

Cry an ocean

Perhaps you can already guess that cry an ocean is another expression for crying a lot.

“He’s cried an ocean since breaking up with his girlfriend.”

Find some more idioms about the ocean here.

Reduced to tears

To reduce someone to tears is to cause them to cry.

“They were reduced to tears upon hearing the sad news.”
“Frank experienced such bad bullying at school that he was reduced to tears almost daily.

Unlike moved to tears, reduced to tears is always used in a negative sense. It could be frustration, sadness, insults, etc. which cause the person to cry. Both of these crying idioms are commonly used in the passive voice.

Cry crocodile tears

Crocodile tears are just pretend tears, so not a sign of actual sadness.

“Lizzie cried crocodile tears when Lance broke up with her, but secretly she was relieved.”

Check out more idioms with animals here (including another idiom for crying, cry wolf).

Have a lump in your throat

Before you actually start crying, you may have the feeling of a lump in your throat. This expression describes the physical sensation of constriction in the throat, caused by emotion.

“Their beautiful wedding vows brought a lump to my throat.”
“Her poetry is so moving; I get a lump in my throat every time I read it.”

Perhaps this is not technically an idiom about crying, since it is literal rather than figurative, but it’s still a good English expression to know.

Hold back the tears

When you want to try and stop yourself from crying, you have to hold back or fight back the tears.

“I could see Ben fighting back the tears to appear strong for his family.”
“He tried to hold back the tears, but in the end he cried his eyes out.”

We hope these idioms about crying will be useful. If you can think of any more, please add a comment below to share them! And, after all this talk of crying, perhaps some idioms about happiness would brighten things up.