Word.ws English Dictionary

sell wolf tickets

sell wolf tickets verb: to make threats or boasts, especially if empty and/or if made to intimidate someone.

Verb

sell wolf tickets (third-person singular simple present sells wolf tickets, present participle selling wolf tickets, simple past and past participle sold wolf tickets)

  1. (African-American Vernacular) To make threats or boasts, especially if empty and/or if made to intimidate someone.
    • It's plenty people selling wolf tickets, you know.1974, Vernon E. Smith, The Jones Men, page 165, quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang (2008)
    • I stood there in silence listening to Ollie build himself up by selling wolf tickets about what he planned to do to me.2007, Stanley Tookie Williams, Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir, page 59

Forms of sell wolf tickets

third-person singular presentsells wolf tickets
present participleselling wolf tickets
past participlesold wolf tickets
pastsold wolf tickets
alternative formsell woof tickets

Origin of sell wolf tickets

From wolf ticket/woof ticket, from woofing (“idly boasting”), from woofing (“(emptily/harmlessly) barking like a dog”). Woof ticket/wolf ticket is attested since the 1960s.

Questions about sell wolf tickets

What does sell wolf tickets mean?
Sell wolf tickets means to make threats or boasts, especially if empty and/or if made to intimidate someone.
What part of speech is sell wolf tickets?
Sell wolf tickets is a verb.
What is the past tense of sell wolf tickets?
The past tense of sell wolf tickets is sold wolf tickets.

Words near sell wolf tickets in the dictionary

  1. sell the dummy
  2. sell the family silver
  3. sell the news
  4. sell the pass
  5. sell up
  6. sell wolf tickets
  7. sell woof tickets
  8. sell-by date
  9. sell-by dates
  10. sell-down
  11. sell-downs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sell wolf tickets (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-sell wolf tickets.wav.

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