What does "Fer cryin' out loud" mean.

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"Fer cryin' out loud," I said to John. "Just give her some cash for the baby and let's go."

In this sentence, what does "Fer cryin' out loud" mean. Is "fer" an abbreviation? Of what?

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View best answer, chosen by Justin Xu

@Justin Xu,

It is an expression that denotes exasperation. Actually, the expression is "FOR crying out loud". I would suspect that the writer was attempting to express some regional way of speaking when he used "fer" (which is not a word). "For Pete's sake" is another expression conveying annoyance.

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@Justin Xu,

Are you able to access any online directories of idioms?

"For crying out loud" is an English-language idiom.

Fer cryin' out loud is written to express the way it might have sounded in a particular region.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/for+crying+out+loud

Quote:

Idioms & Phrases
for crying out loud

An exclamation of anger or exasperation, as in For crying out loud, can't you do anything right? This term is a euphemism for "for Christ's sake." [Colloquial; early 1900s]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.

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There is also an expression of frustration, "for Christ's sake." People with religious sentiments find that offensive, however, and so an expression such "for cryin' out loud" is used instead.

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@Phoenix32890,

Quote:

I would suspect that the writer was attempting to express some regional way of speaking when he used "fer" (which is not a word).

This use of 'fer' is natural to a wide range of English speakers in fast casual speech. It's as natural as gonna, hafta, myda(v), maya, shuda, wuda, wonta, and all the hundreds of other examples of compressed speech.

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@Phoenix32890,

Quote:

I would suspect that the writer was attempting to express some regional way of speaking when he used "fer" (which is not a word).

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What does "Fer cryin' out loud" mean.

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