Word.ws English Dictionary

cried wolf

cried wolf is the simple past and past participle of cry wolf.

Meaning of cry wolf

Verb

cry wolf (third-person singular simple present cries wolf, present participle crying wolf, simple past and past participle cried wolf)

  1. (idiomatic) To raise a false alarm; to constantly warn others about an imagined threat, thereby failing to get assistance when a real threat appears.
    • The politicians would cry wolf at the slightest provocation so when the real threat appeared no one believed them.

Questions about cried wolf

What is cried wolf the simple past and past participle of?
Cried wolf is the simple past and past participle of cry wolf.

Words near cried wolf in the dictionary

  1. cried someone a river
  2. cried stinking fish
  3. cried the blues
  4. cried uncle
  5. cried up
  6. cried wolf
  7. criedst
  8. Crieff
  9. crier
  10. criers
  11. cries

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cried wolf (page history and authors); cry wolf (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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