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Are there any languages or dialects wherein

  • at least one of the words for rain, (rain)drop, or (rain)cloud is a cognate of at least one the terms for tear(drop) or cry(ing) ?

  • or (rain)clouds are called tear clouds or cry(ing) clouds ?

  • or there is no distinction between tear(drop) and raindrop ?

  • This question is not about poetic license.
  • Trivial examples, such as the English raindrop and teardrop being both compounds of drop, are excluded.
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  • Irish deoir primarily just means ‘drop’ (of any kind), but is used on its own to refer to both teardrops and raindrops (deora a bhaint as X ‘reduce X to tears’; deora anuas ‘leak’ [in a roof that it rains through, lit. ‘drops from above’]). You can specify deoir bháistí/fhearthainne ‘drop of rain’ for raindrops, but I don’t think there’s a similar disambiguating form for tears. Would you count that?
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Aug 10, 2021 at 13:08
  • @JanusBahsJacquet: Is it the main or only word for tear ?
    – Lucian
    Aug 10, 2021 at 13:31
  • Only word, as far as I know. Focloir.ie also doesn’t give any other options, so at least the only common word for it. Actually, I think I have to revise my initial statement: ‘tear’ is probably the primary sense of deoir, and ‘drop’ (in various meanings) is secondary to that. There’s also braon, which has generic ‘drop’ as its primary sense (including raindrops), but isn’t used for tears.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Aug 10, 2021 at 13:46
  • @JanusBahsJacquet: As far as I can tell, there are two distinct words, one of which seems to be the main word for tear(drop), and the other the main word for (rain)drop; if there would have been only one main word for expressing both concepts, that would definitely have been on topic.
    – Lucian
    Aug 10, 2021 at 14:32
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    Not quite. Deoir and braon are both used with qualifying nouns/adjectives for various different types of drops (braon/deoir allais bead of sweat, braon/deoir uisce drop of water, braon/deoir b[h]áistí/f[h]earthainne raindrop, braon/deoir drúchta dewdrop, etc.). Both can also be used in most of these senses with no qualifier, but with no qualifier, only deoir is used for tears, and only braon is used for drinks. So Irish essentially has a lexeme for ‘tear(drop)’ and one for ‘drop (of drink)’, but none for ‘raindrop’ – you use one of the others with a qualifier for that.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Aug 10, 2021 at 14:41

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