See cry the blues in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for cry the blues meaning in English (3.5kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "cries the blues",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "crying the blues",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "cried the blues",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "cried the blues",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*"
},
"expansion": "cry the blues (third-person singular simple present cries the blues, present participle crying the blues, simple past and past participle cried the blues)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Music",
"orig": "en:Music",
"parents": [
"Art",
"Sound",
"Culture",
"Energy",
"Society",
"Nature",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"_dis": "66 34",
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Blues music",
"orig": "en:Blues music",
"parents": [
"Musical genres",
"Genres",
"Music",
"Entertainment",
"Art",
"Sound",
"Culture",
"Energy",
"Society",
"Nature",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1958 September 1, “Best of the Blues”, in Time",
"text": "\"Young people have forgotten how to cry the blues,\" said Big Bill Broonzy as he lay dying in a dark room above the littered streets of Chicago's Negro South Side.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To sing in the style of blues music."
],
"id": "en-cry_the_blues-en-verb-kgCJLV3A",
"links": [
[
"music",
"music"
],
[
"sing",
"sing"
],
[
"blues",
"blues"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(music) To sing in the style of blues music."
],
"topics": [
"entertainment",
"lifestyle",
"music"
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "8 92",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "12 88",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
"parents": [
"Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "9 91",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"parents": [
"Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1934 October 3, “Slang Declared Barometer Of Nation's State Of Mind”, in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, retrieved 2008-11-20, page 15",
"text": "The average citizen gets an extreme emotional delight in ‘crying the blues’ to anyone who might lend an attentive ear.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2006 July 9, Ben Stein, “Everybody's Business”, in New York Times, retrieved 2008-11-20",
"text": "We have immense corporations that cry the blues all day long about how their pension costs are ruining them.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To complain, especially in order to obtain sympathy for one's own purportedly sad situation."
],
"id": "en-cry_the_blues-en-verb-Tmsu9-I2",
"links": [
[
"complain",
"complain"
],
[
"sympathy",
"sympathy"
],
[
"purported",
"purported"
],
[
"sad",
"sad"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, by extension) To complain, especially in order to obtain sympathy for one's own purportedly sad situation."
],
"tags": [
"broadly",
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-cry the blues.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c7/En-au-cry_the_blues.ogg/En-au-cry_the_blues.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/En-au-cry_the_blues.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "cry the blues"
}
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"English verbs",
"en:Blues music"
],
"forms": [
{
"form": "cries the blues",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "crying the blues",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "cried the blues",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "cried the blues",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*"
},
"expansion": "cry the blues (third-person singular simple present cries the blues, present participle crying the blues, simple past and past participle cried the blues)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations",
"en:Music"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1958 September 1, “Best of the Blues”, in Time",
"text": "\"Young people have forgotten how to cry the blues,\" said Big Bill Broonzy as he lay dying in a dark room above the littered streets of Chicago's Negro South Side.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To sing in the style of blues music."
],
"links": [
[
"music",
"music"
],
[
"sing",
"sing"
],
[
"blues",
"blues"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(music) To sing in the style of blues music."
],
"topics": [
"entertainment",
"lifestyle",
"music"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1934 October 3, “Slang Declared Barometer Of Nation's State Of Mind”, in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, retrieved 2008-11-20, page 15",
"text": "The average citizen gets an extreme emotional delight in ‘crying the blues’ to anyone who might lend an attentive ear.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2006 July 9, Ben Stein, “Everybody's Business”, in New York Times, retrieved 2008-11-20",
"text": "We have immense corporations that cry the blues all day long about how their pension costs are ruining them.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To complain, especially in order to obtain sympathy for one's own purportedly sad situation."
],
"links": [
[
"complain",
"complain"
],
[
"sympathy",
"sympathy"
],
[
"purported",
"purported"
],
[
"sad",
"sad"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, by extension) To complain, especially in order to obtain sympathy for one's own purportedly sad situation."
],
"tags": [
"broadly",
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-cry the blues.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c7/En-au-cry_the_blues.ogg/En-au-cry_the_blues.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/En-au-cry_the_blues.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "cry the blues"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.