Word.ws English Dictionary

crying wolf

crying wolf is the present participle and gerund 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 crying wolf

What is crying wolf the present participle and gerund of?
Crying wolf is the present participle and gerund of cry wolf.

Words near crying wolf in the dictionary

  1. crying someone a river
  2. crying stinking fish
  3. crying the blues
  4. crying uncle
  5. crying up
  6. crying wolf
  7. cryingly
  8. cryings
  9. crykonisine
  10. Crymelon
  11. Crymes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crying 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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