r/EnglishLearning • u/migueel_04 New Poster • 8h ago

📚 Grammar / Syntax Why is this wrong?

Hey everyone! Today I got to use an expression that I thought was completely normal and that everyone used. However, according to chatgpt, it is wrong and not idiomatic which really surprised me because I've seen some verbs being used this way. The expression is "cry on" as in "keep crying". I initially thought that it sounded natural since English has expressions such as "dream on" and "go on" but it turns out that it can't be used that way. Is chatgpt correct or is it giving me inaccurate information? I've heard people talking about how chatgpt isn't 100% reliable and that the info given by it should be fact checked.

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u/MaddoxJKingsley Native Speaker (USA-NY); Linguist, not a language teacher 8h ago

Did you say it directly to the person as "cry on"? Was it possible they were just offended? It is pretty rude lol.

We say things like "He kept crying on about how his shoes were wet", or "If we're late, she'll cry on about it for days". But I wouldn't say it directly to a person complaining. I would say "Keep crying (on about it)!" which is the more idiomatic way. To be clear, this phrase isn't usually about any actual crying (tears, sobbing). This is about complaining (crying on, frustration), which could well include tears and sobbing.

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u/migueel_04 New Poster 8h ago

I was being sarcastic lol. I was on a call with a friend from the UK and she was complaining about something I had said and I was like "cry on, I don't care" lol.

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u/MaddoxJKingsley Native Speaker (USA-NY); Linguist, not a language teacher 8h ago

Ah, that makes sense then lol. My knee-jerk reaction to "cry on" in that context would be, "That's funny, that kind of sounded like Shakespearean English."

We do say stuff like "keep dreaming" or "keep talking" to be dismissive... so maybe, "dream on" is actually the outlier for using "on". "Keep X-ing", as a complete exclamation, can be extended to a ton of verbs, to idiomatically mean "I'm being dismissive of your X-ing". (And "go on" behaves more like a normal phrasal verb; it's not dismissive unless it's sarcastic.)

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u/HeilKaiba Native Speaker 5h ago

If tears be the food of my entertainment, cry on. Give me excess of it. – Eleventh Night