See cry wolf on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "From the fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf, where a little boy amuses himself by repeatedly crying \"wolf\" to see the panic he causes in the community, but is consequently ignored when he tries to alert them to a real wolf.",
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"form": "cries wolf",
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{
"form": "cried wolf",
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"form": "cried wolf",
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"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
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"examples": [
{
"text": "The politicians would cry wolf at the slightest provocation so when the real threat appeared no one believed them.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1907, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter II, in The War in the Air: […], London: George Bell and Sons, published 1908, →OCLC:",
"text": "The newspaper placards that had cried \"wolf!\" so often, cried \"wolf!\" now in vain.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "[1921 [1919], H. L. Mencken, chapter 5, in The American Language, 2nd edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 36:",
"text": "[…]and the critical sense of the professors counts for little, for they cry wolf too often[…]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1983, Ronald Reagan, Presidential Radio Address - 15 October, 1983:",
"text": "[…]those who created the worst economic mess in postwar history should be the last people crying wolf 1,000 days into this administration[…]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2021 July 17, Somini Sengupta, quoting Ulka Kelkar, “‘No One Is Safe’: Extreme Weather Batters the Wealthy World”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
"text": "These intensifying disasters now striking richer countries, she said, show that developing countries seeking the world’s help to fight climate change “have not been crying wolf.”",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To raise a false alarm; to constantly warn others about an imagined threat, thereby failing to get assistance when a real threat appears."
],
"id": "en-cry_wolf-en-verb-UTxX6vcK",
"links": [
[
"alarm",
"alarm"
],
[
"imagined",
"imagined"
],
[
"threat",
"threat"
],
[
"assistance",
"assistance"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To raise a false alarm; to constantly warn others about an imagined threat, thereby failing to get assistance when a real threat appears."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "Chicken Little"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"english": "wolf",
"word": "cry"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "狼來了"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "狼来了"
},
{
"code": "cs",
"lang": "Czech",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "malovat čerta na zeď"
},
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "råbe ulven kommer"
},
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "loos alarm slaan"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "antaa väärä hälytys"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "nostaa meteli tyhjästä"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "crier au loup"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "gridare al lupo"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "podnosić fałszywy alarm"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"tags": [
"perfective"
],
"word": "podnieść fałszywy alarm"
},
{
"code": "ro",
"lang": "Romanian",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "striga lupul"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "gritar ¡al lobo!"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "ropa varg"
},
{
"code": "te",
"lang": "Telugu",
"roman": "nānnā puli",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "నాన్నా పులి"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"The Boy Who Cried Wolf"
]
}
],
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"word": "cry wolf"
}
{
"etymology_text": "From the fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf, where a little boy amuses himself by repeatedly crying \"wolf\" to see the panic he causes in the community, but is consequently ignored when he tries to alert them to a real wolf.",
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{
"form": "crying wolf",
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{
"form": "cried wolf",
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"word": "Chicken Little"
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"text": "The politicians would cry wolf at the slightest provocation so when the real threat appeared no one believed them.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1907, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter II, in The War in the Air: […], London: George Bell and Sons, published 1908, →OCLC:",
"text": "The newspaper placards that had cried \"wolf!\" so often, cried \"wolf!\" now in vain.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "[1921 [1919], H. L. Mencken, chapter 5, in The American Language, 2nd edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 36:",
"text": "[…]and the critical sense of the professors counts for little, for they cry wolf too often[…]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1983, Ronald Reagan, Presidential Radio Address - 15 October, 1983:",
"text": "[…]those who created the worst economic mess in postwar history should be the last people crying wolf 1,000 days into this administration[…]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2021 July 17, Somini Sengupta, quoting Ulka Kelkar, “‘No One Is Safe’: Extreme Weather Batters the Wealthy World”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
"text": "These intensifying disasters now striking richer countries, she said, show that developing countries seeking the world’s help to fight climate change “have not been crying wolf.”",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To raise a false alarm; to constantly warn others about an imagined threat, thereby failing to get assistance when a real threat appears."
],
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],
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"imagined",
"imagined"
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],
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"(idiomatic) To raise a false alarm; to constantly warn others about an imagined threat, thereby failing to get assistance when a real threat appears."
],
"tags": [
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],
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"synonyms": [
{
"english": "wolf",
"word": "cry"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "狼來了"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "狼来了"
},
{
"code": "cs",
"lang": "Czech",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "malovat čerta na zeď"
},
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "råbe ulven kommer"
},
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "loos alarm slaan"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "antaa väärä hälytys"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "nostaa meteli tyhjästä"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "crier au loup"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "gridare al lupo"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "podnosić fałszywy alarm"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"tags": [
"perfective"
],
"word": "podnieść fałszywy alarm"
},
{
"code": "ro",
"lang": "Romanian",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "striga lupul"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "gritar ¡al lobo!"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "ropa varg"
},
{
"code": "te",
"lang": "Telugu",
"roman": "nānnā puli",
"sense": "raise a false alarm",
"word": "నాన్నా పులి"
}
],
"word": "cry wolf"
}
Download raw JSONL data for cry wolf meaning in All languages combined (5.3kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (8a39820 and 4401a4c). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.