cry for help

plural cries for help

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cry, for, help.

   We heard the drowning woman's cries for help and ran to assist.

2. idiomaticActing out as a means of displaying a subconscious desire for attention or help.

   In her second year at the school Alexis stopped doing her homework and would often scribble on walls. Her teachers wondered whether this was a cry for help, or if she was simply misbehaving.

   1 more example

   Tucker Carlson (also a jacket and tie guy) picked up on the hoo-ha on his Fox News show, calling the hoodie-jacket combination a “cry for help” and inviting Roger Stone, the disgraced former political operative and author of his own “Best and Worst dressed List,” to comment.

   2023 February 20, Vanessa Friedman, quoting Tucker Carlson, “Don Lemon, Nikki Haley and the Lessons of a Hoodie”, in The New York Times, →ISSN