to cry out for help: to call aloud and urgently to be rescued from trouble
This is the voice of someone in serious trouble calling out to be saved. It is not a quiet request or ordinary weeping but a loud, urgent appeal for rescue, and it belongs almost entirely to poetry: the book of Job, the Psalms, and a few prophets. The word names the cry itself, the act of raising one's voice for help, whatever the outcome.
Most often the cry goes up to God, and the Psalms tie it directly to being heard and rescued: the writer cries out and God answers or delivers (Psalm 18:6; 30:2; Jonah 2:2; Psalm 119:147). But the same word also describes the cry of the wounded, the oppressed, and the wronged whose appeal seems to meet only silence. This is central to Job's protest: he cries out and is not answered (Job 19:7; 30:20), and he indicts a world where the abused cry for help and God appears to charge no one with wrong (Job 24:12).
It sits among the Hebrew verbs for crying out and often stands right beside them. In Job 19:7 it runs parallel to the more common verb for crying out (צָעַק), and it keeps close company with the outcry word (זָעַק). The related noun (שַׁוְעָה) is the cry itself as a thing, where this word is the act of crying.