Far cry meaning

[SirVive]

What is the origin of the phrase 'a far cry'?

[FredPuli]

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable gives the explanation that 'cry here is a loud shout, which would not be heard at a distance'. However the Shorter Oxford Dictionary includes in the many definitions of 'cry' this intriguing one ' a pack of hounds' ( C16 ). Now it is easy to see that a 'far cry' might once have meant 'a pack of hounds a long way off, far from the speaker or far from the animal hunted'. Indeed we use ' a far cry' sometimes to indicate that one activity , though along similar lines as another is still far short of what it might be hoped or expected to achieve e.g ' Its working in the lab is a far cry from its working in industry' or ' It's a far cry from working in Hollywood'

[sylvday]

I think FredPuli is rather complicating the matter. A "far cry" dates back to the pre-mobile days when the only way of communicating with a neighbour was to shout to him, and meant that one place was a long way from another. (A corresponding term of nearness was "within cry of".) In time, the expression began to be used metaphorically, to refer to any two things which are related but a long way apart, such as "Tony Blair's current popularity is a far cry from the glory days of 1997".

[FredPuli]

Aw, c'mon sylvday ! What would enquiries like this be without answers consisting of wild speculation dressed up as academic research and for which there is no concrete evidence of use whatever ? Half the nursery rhyme books let alone of the 'explanations' of ancient sayings would go and with them the poor drudges who write them !