Today’s Zippy, with our Pinhead dissembling sadness:
(#1)
(With a little compendium of expressions conveying sadness or despair.)
Wikipedia on crocodile tears:
Crocodile tears (or superficial sympathy) are a false, insincere display of emotion such as a hypocrite crying fake tears of grief. The phrase derives from an ancient belief that crocodiles shed tears while consuming their victims. While crocodiles do have tear ducts, they weep to lubricate their eyes, typically when they have been out of water for a long time and their eyes begin to dry out. However, there is evidence that this can also be triggered by feeding.
(#2)
A cartoon by Bernhard Gillam depicting Ulysses S. Grant courting Jewish voters by crying “crocodile tears” over the persecution of Jews in Russia. The cartoon contrasts Grant’s expressions of outrage with his own earlier order to expel Jews from conquered Confederate states.
On the verb despond, from NOAD2:
verb [no obj. archaic become dejected and lose confidence.
noun a state of unhappiness and low spirits.
ORIGIN mid 17th cent. [OED2 has 1655, from Oliver Cromwell]: from Latin despondere ‘give up, abandon,’ from de– ‘away’ + spondere ‘to promise.’ The word was [first] used as a noun in [the expression] Slough of Despond .
Wikipedia on the Slough of Despond:
The Slough of Despond (… “swamp of despair”) is a deep bog in John Bunyan’s allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress [1678], into which the protagonist Christian sinks under the weight of his sins and his sense of guilt for them.
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