Dictionary

cry poormouth en · VERB

Meanings

1. (informal, intransitive) To claim to be poor, especially in a conspicuous and self-pitying way.
   • Thus, at the May 12 meeting, testified Medeiros, Chubb had asked if the Union could make any concessions in the contract to keep the restaurant open and if the Union would be willing to afford Respondent Love's "some relief in certain classifications, in health and welfare and so forth." Medeiros, however, testified that he had viewed these comments as no more than a bargaining ploy inasmuch as it had been his experience, based upon past negotiations, that employers, in general, and Chubb, in particular, were "always crying poormouth and they are always trying to whittle something out of the organization and I just take it as a matter—I have been hearing this for thirty something years, I just take it as a matter of—I just take it as a grain of salt, the same old story." 1981, “Love's Barbeque Restaurant No. 62”, in Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board, volume 245, United States National Labor Relations Board, page 89:
   • The true state of the taxi fleets' finances, a condition that is central to the question of how much more—if anything—the city's 800,000 daily riders should be asked to pay, is a mystery. Were the fleets, which operate 58 per cent of the 11,779 cabs licensed to cruise New York's streets (the rest are jockeyed by independent owner-drivers) really running a $7-million-a-year loss? What happened to all the bread that came out of the 1968 settlement, when the City Council with only one dissenting vote approved an increase in the average fare from $1.05 to $1.35? Were the fleets, privately controlled from behind an impenetrable thicket of at least 2,000 separate corporations—an auditor's nightmare—once again merely crying poormouth? 1971 January 4, Richard Phalon, “After the cab strike: How was the meter made? The City Politic [column]”, in New York, volume 4, number 1, page 8:
   • Don't take her drama too seriously. She's always crying poormouth.

Forms

Relateds

cry cupboard · cry for help · cap in hand · impoverished

Synonyms

poormouth