Where did the expression crocodile tears come from ?
The first example known in English seems to be in a travel book of about 1400, The Voyage and Travail of Sir John Mandeville (I’ve modernised the spelling somewhat): “In many places of Inde are many crocodiles—that is, a manner of long serpent. These serpents slay men and they eat them weeping”. One version of the story says that the beast weeps over the head after having eaten the body, not from repentance but from frustrated gluttony: the head is simply too bony to be worth consuming. The story was taken up by Edmund Spenser in The Fairie Queen and then by Shakespeare. Having such authorities on its side made it almost inevitable that the reference would stay in the language. For example, in the story of how the elephant got his trunk in the Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling: ” ‘Come hither, Little One,’ said the Crocodile, ‘for I am the Crocodile,’ and he wept crocodile-tears to show it was quite true”. Shakespeare and other writers. To pretend sorrow or pitty or hurt feelings.
