wolves

Noun

wolf (plural wolves)

1. (countable) Canis lupus; the largest wild member of the canine subfamily.
   • He would listen quietly at meetings of the Politburo, or to distinguished visitors, puffing at his Dunhill pipe, doodling aimlessly - his secretaries Poskrebyshev and Dvinsky write that his pads were sometimes covered with the phrase ‘Lenin-teacher-friend’, but the last foreigner to visit him, in...1968, Robert Conquest, “The Purge Begins”, in The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, Macmillan Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 74

   Synonyms:

   grey wolf

   1. (countable) Any of several related canines that resemble Canis lupus in appearance, especially those of the genus Canis.
2. A man who makes amorous advances to many women.
3. A wolf tone or wolf note.
   • The soft violin solo was marred by persistent wolves.
4. (figuratively) Any very ravenous, rapacious, or destructive person or thing; especially, want; starvation.
   • They toiled hard to keep the wolf from the door.
5. One of the destructive, and usually hairy, larvae of several species of beetles and grain moths.

See all 16 meanings of wolf

Verb

wolve (third-person singular simple present wolves, present participle wolving, simple past and past participle wolved)

1. (intransitive) To behave like a wolf.
2. (intransitive) Of an organ, to make a hollow whining sound like that of a wolf.
   • he had returned to his schoolboy's script, to distant Evensongs, to the wolving of the ancient chapel organ as the last light is extinguished and the door latched for the long night.2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 784