Word.ws English Dictionary

Mowgli syndrome

Mowgli syndrome noun: the condition of a feral child.

Noun

Mowgli syndrome (uncountable)

  1. The condition of a feral child.
    • Alas, in reality children who have no experience of human care, loving relationships, and language display none of these. Instead, they display symptoms of what is called the Mowgli syndrome, symptoms including fear of humans, […]2008, Zygon, volume 43, page 835
    • So when little Sasha came into the care of our outreach, he came with that “Mowgli syndrome” designation because he had been raised by dogs and had no memory of ever living with a human being.2017, Rick Renner, Sparkling Gems from the Greek Vol. 2

Origin of Mowgli syndrome

After Mowgli, the fictional protagonist of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894), who was raised by wolves.

Questions about Mowgli syndrome

What does Mowgli syndrome mean?
Mowgli syndrome means the condition of a feral child.
What part of speech is Mowgli syndrome?
Mowgli syndrome is a noun.

Words near Mowgli syndrome in the dictionary

  1. Mowerses
  2. Mowery
  3. Mowerys
  4. mowest
  5. moweth
  6. Mowgli syndrome
  7. mowhay
  8. mowhays
  9. mowin
  10. mowin'
  11. mowing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Mowgli syndrome (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Mowgli syndrome.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mowgli_syndrome. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.