Word.ws English Dictionary

cry wolf

cry wolf verb: to raise a false alarm; to constantly warn others about an imagined threat, thereby failing to get assistance when a real threat appears.

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.
    • The newspaper placards that had cried "wolf!" so often, cried "wolf!" now in vain.1907, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter II, in The War in the Air: […], London: George Bell and Sons, published 1908, →OCLC

cry wolf meaning in Telugu

cry wolf in Telugu

raise a false alarm
నాన్నా పులి nānnā puli

Forms of cry wolf

third-person singular presentcries wolf
present participlecrying wolf
past participlecried wolf
pastcried wolf
alternative formcry “wolf”

Origin of cry wolf

From the fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf, where a little boy amuses himself by repeatedly crying "wolf" to see the panic he causes in the community, but is consequently ignored when he tries to alert them to a real wolf.

Questions about cry wolf

What does cry wolf mean?
Cry wolf means to raise a false alarm; to constantly warn others about an imagined threat, thereby failing to get assistance when a real threat appears.
What is cry wolf in Telugu?
Cry wolf in Telugu is నాన్నా పులి (nānnā puli). See Cry wolf meaning in Telugu.
What part of speech is cry wolf?
Cry wolf is a verb.
What is the past tense of cry wolf?
The past tense of cry wolf is cried wolf.

Words near cry wolf in the dictionary

  1. cry someone a river
  2. cry stinking fish
  3. cry the blues
  4. cry uncle
  5. cry up
  6. cry wolf
  7. cry-babies
  8. cry-baby
  9. cry-laugh
  10. cry-laughed
  11. cry-laughing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cry wolf.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cry wolf.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cry_wolf. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.