pleurer (French)
Where does "pleurer" come from?
French pleurer goes back through Middle French pleurer and Old French plourer/plorer to Latin plōrāre, which meant “to cry out.” Over time, the word shifted from the idea of shouting or crying out to the more specific sense of shedding tears and mourning. It is also related to Catalan plorar and Spanish llorar.
Ancestors
- plourer (Old French)
- ploro (Latin)
Cognates and doublets
- plorar (Catalan)
- llorar (Spanish)
Descendants and derived words
- plori (Esperanto)
- à pleurer (French)
- faire pleurer le colosse (French)
- pleurer à chaudes larmes (French)
- pleurer comme une madeleine (French)
- pleurer des larmes de sang (French)
- pleurer toutes les larmes de son corps (French)
- pleureur (French)
- pleureur (French)
- pleureuse (French)
- tel qui rit vendredi, dimanche pleurera (French)
- plore (Mauritian Creole)
Updated March 2026
Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris