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

See Examples For:

cry wolf

A Cabinet Office report during trials in 2014 warned of this "cry wolf" effect, while pointing out there was strong support among the public for the alerts.

From BBC ● Aug. 29, 2026

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

No one wants to cry wolf or be wrong.

From Slate ● Sep. 7, 2021

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

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

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