English Idiom – Cry wolf.
To keep raising false alarms, so that people stop believing you, even when you are telling the truth.
Tom says he’s sick every Monday, but he’s always fine by lunchtime. One day he really is ill, but nobody believes him. Tom has cried wolf too many times!
This idiom comes from one of Aesop’s fables, stories from ancient Greece. A bored shepherd boy shouts “Wolf! Wolf!” to trick the villagers into running up the hill. He does it again and again. When a real wolf finally comes, he shouts for help, but nobody comes, because nobody believes him any more. The phrase cry wolf, meaning “raise a false alarm”, was in use in English by 1812.
How to Use It
- The basic form is cry wolf: “Don’t cry wolf, or nobody will listen when it matters.”
- It works in every tense: “He cried wolf once too often.” / “She’s always crying wolf.”
- You’ll also see the boy who cried wolf used about a person: “Don’t be the boy who cried wolf!”
Note: “cry” here means shout, not weep. Nobody is in tears; they’re just shouting for help!
More animal idioms: Kill Two Birds With One Stone, A Fish Out of Water and Let the Cat Out of the Bag.
Example:
- “Tom says he’s sick every Monday. If he keeps crying wolf, nobody will believe him when he really is ill!”
- “The fire alarm at school goes off every week for no reason. It’s crying wolf, and soon nobody will leave the building.”
- “My little brother always says there’s a spider in his room. He cries wolf so often that we’ve stopped checking.”
Learn More
Look it upThe Boy Who Cried WolfWikipediaWhat is an idiom?
An idiom is a word or phrase that is not taken literally. An idiom is an expression that cannot be understood from the meanings of its individual words, but has a separate meaning of its own.
Love animal idioms? See our full list of 50 animal idioms in English, with meanings and examples.
Frequently Asked Questions
To cry wolf means to keep raising false alarms, so that people stop believing you, even when you finally tell the truth.
It comes from Aesop’s fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, about a shepherd boy who tricks villagers with fake wolf alarms. When a real wolf comes, nobody believes him. The idiom was used in English by 1812.
No. Here “cry” has its older meaning of shouting or calling out loudly, as in “cry for help”.
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