cry wolf

Idioms  

1. Raise a false alarm, as in Helen's always crying wolf about attempted break-ins, but the police can never find any evidence. This term comes from the tale about a young shepherd watching his flock who, lonely and fearful, called for help by shouting “Wolf!” After people came to his aid several times and saw no wolf, they ignored his cries when a wolf actually attacked his sheep. The tale appeared in a translation of Aesop's fables by Roger L'Estrange (1692), and the expression has been applied to any false alarm since the mid-1800s.

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Example Sentences

That sort of description typically makes me urp; too many critics serve it up every week or two and they cry wolf, or masterwork, or not-to-be-missed too often to be trusted.

From Seattle Times • Mar. 12, 2024

“We don’t want to cry wolf and say, ‘Oh, we’re gonna get record amounts of rain, catastrophic flooding,’ and then you get about half what you think.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 17, 2024

There are only so many times someone can cry wolf before they're laughed off the air, critics tweeted.

From Salon • Jul. 1, 2021

At any rate, there’s also something to be said for medical alarm fatigue: the idea that if we cry wolf about the health risks of all potentially harmful things, we’ll ignore serious threats.

From Slate • Dec. 13, 2016

This makes six times you’ve run home to cry wolf.

From Adventures of Working Men From the Notebook of a Working Surgeon by Fenn, George Manville