Crocodile Tears

In another attempt to provide you with the good word that means the same thing as a more familiar phrase, let's look at crocodile tears. Well, not actually at crocodile tears, but at the expression. According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_tear), the phrase has a quite lengthy history, having been found first in French around 1400 and used by Shakespeare twice.

The expression does not, as some presume, come from the belief that crocodiles cannot cry. They actually can cry, although since I flunked biology it's better for me not to explain too much. The earliest reference to the phrase (in the French work The Voyage and Travail of Sir John Maundeville - circa 1400) is to a belief that crocodiles "slay men, and then, weeping, eat them."

Crocodile tears has since come to mean crying in a way that is exaggerated or ridiculous, which is part of the definition of the adjective lugubrious. Lugubrious comes very directly from the Latin word for mourn, lugubris. Add an ou (oh, you!) and there you are. Lugubrious is the word you're looking for when someone's crying seems to be exaggerated or ridiculous.

In the aforementioned wikipedia reference it makes mention to the biological source of tears in crocodiles, the lacrimal glands. Look up lacrimal in my dictionary and it says "same as lachrymal". Big help, isn't it?

Why the change from one spelling to another? My guess is that the ch and y have something to do with a transliteration from the Greek, because the Greek letter chi could by either ch or c and upsilon would be transliterated as y (but not i; here is where my contention falters). I couldn't find any explanation; if you have one, feel free to comment. (Watch for the appearance of the spelling lacrimose, not yet in my dictionary but increasingly seen in public.) But two words below lacrimal is the word lacrimatory, with reference to the alternate spelling lachrymatory. That word has an interesting etymology.

A lachrymatory is a small vase used in Roman times to catch the tears of mourners and placed in the tomb as a sign of respect to the departed. (Thank you, lachrymatory.com - a site for collectors of these beautiful vases.) While the practice seemed most common in Roman times there is a reference in Ps. 56:8 to putting tears in a bottle, so the practice is quite old.

The word below lachrymatory in my dictionary is the adjective lachrymose; we've finally arrived at our second word of the day. (Sometimes my train of thought meanders, sometimes it just derails.) Lachrymose comes from the Latin word for tear, lacrimosus. It doesn't have any connotation of insincerity. If someone is crying easily or heavily they are lachrymose.

So, today's words are not uplifting, but hopefully they're interesting and useful. You can always try telling a child "quit being lugubrious or I'll give you something to be lachrymose about" and see what happens.