cry wolf
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To raise a false alarm or make a false claim
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Kích động sự hoảng loạn giả hoặc đưa ra yêu cầu sai
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: to cry about a wolf
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
He accused her of crying wolf and prepared to go riding on the Sandringham estate.
Treasurers suffer the erm, the occupational hazard that they always, to some extent, have to cry wolf.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “cry wolf” mean?
To raise a false alarm or make a false claim Literally: to cry about a wolf
Is “cry wolf” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.