cry wolf - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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.

cry wolf (third-person singular simple present cries wolf, present participle crying wolf, simple past and past participle cried wolf)

  1. (idiomatic) To raise a false alarm; to constantly warn others about an imagined threat, thereby failing to get assistance when a real threat appears.
    The politicians would cry wolf at the slightest provocation so when the real threat appeared no one believed them.
    • 2021 July 17, Somini Sengupta, quoting Ulka Kelkar, “‘No One Is Safe’: Extreme Weather Batters the Wealthy World”, in The New York Times‎[1], →ISSN, archived from the original on 30 July 2021:
      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.”
    • 2026 April 18, John Thornhill, quoting Ben Thompson, “Lunch with the FT: Dario Amodei”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3:
      The influential tech analyst Ben Thompson has also criticised [Dario] Amodei for crying wolf about the risks of AI, which he describes as a “disaster-porn-as-marketing tool”.