to cry wolf
12
5.8
- idiom
:
dar falsas alarmas
- If you keep crying wolf about every little problem, nobody will believe you when there is a real emergency.
- the boy who cried wolf
- the little boy who cried wolf
- crying wolf every time
One of these days y'all are going to cry wolf and I'm not going to believe you.
- One of these days y'all are going to cry wolf and I'm not going to believe you.
- I feel like if a much worse pandemic came along, we as a world have now cried wolf.
- In that note, he cried wolf so many times that now that he actually is on to the biggest thing that's ever happened, no one believes him.
- All of the the stock, you know, boy crying wolf phrases that they've used.
- Is the wolf on the loose referring to the boy who cried wolf?
- And they thought about it and the Ed docs got together and said three times a month you can cry wolf.
Examples
-
Is Dad really dying again or are you just crying wolf?
-
Of course, if you are merely 'crying wolf', there is no wolf to begin with.
Blog text (21) -
Is it any wonder that the rest of the world thinks you are crying wolf?
Blog text (15) -
Maybe it's a case of crying wolf too often.
Blog text (2) -
I know I sound like the boy who cried wolf but -
-
I'm not just crying wolf this time.
-
So who's crying wolf now?
-
You'll be feeling like the little boy that cried wolf.
-
We can't ignore the real ones just because a lot of people cry wolf.
Blog text (28) -
There's a folk tale about a shepherd boy who cried wolf once too often.
Blog text (14)
Synonyms
To cry 'fire' when there is none to make people panic
To spread exaggerated fear on purpose to make people worry
Antonyms
How Truthful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to raise a false alarm' cannot be derived from the literal senses of 'cry' (to call out) and 'wolf' (the animal); taken compositionally it would mean to shout about a wolf, not to issue repeated false warnings. The idiomatic sense comes from a cultural fable and is therefore unpredictable for a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words and has not encountered the expression before.
Etymology
The idiom cry wolf comes from an old story about a boy who shouted 'wolf!' as a joke so the villagers ran to help, but there was no wolf and they stopped believing him. So cry wolf now means 'to raise a false alarm', because people will ignore you if you warn about danger when you have lied before.