【趣谈英语】鳄鱼的眼泪-Crocodiles Tear Up While Eating

（单词翻译）

Pre-Listening Vocabulary

• tear up: to cry a little bit; to become weepy
• insincere: fake; not truthful¹
• shed: to drop or remove something, such as a layer of skin or a tear
• remorseful²: full of guilt³
• sympathy: a feeling of sadness for another person’s loss
• paralysis⁴: the inability to move an area of the body

Crocodiles Tear Up While Eating

The expression “to cry crocodile tears” means to cry insincerely. Children are often accused of shedding crocodile tears in order to get attention. The expression “crocodile tears” goes back as far as the 1400s. It come from a myth that crocodiles pretend to be remorseful after killing⁵ their prey⁶. While scientists don’t believe that crocodiles are capable of sympathy, crocodiles do tend to shed tears while eating. This is likely a physical response that goes along with their tendency to blow out air as they eat. Humans who suffer from a rare facial paralysis sometimes exhibit a similar physical response. When they taste or eat food, they start to cry.