Tag archives: crocodile tears
Why do we call false sentiment ‘crocodile tears’? Can crocodiles really cry?
To shed crocodile tears is to put on an insincere act of being sad. The expression is very old, dating back to the mid-sixteenth century. An account of the life of Edmund Grindal, the sixteenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury, quotes him as saying, ‘I begin to fear, lest his humility . . . be a counterfeit [...]
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