Word.ws English Dictionary

cries wolf

cries wolf is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 cries wolf

What is cries wolf the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Cries wolf is the third-person singular simple present indicative of cry wolf.

Words near cries wolf in the dictionary

  1. cries someone a river
  2. cries stinking fish
  3. cries the blues
  4. cries uncle
  5. cries up
  6. cries wolf
  7. criest
  8. crieth
  9. criey
  10. crifanac
  11. CRification

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cries 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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