wolf
/wʊlf
/- Canis lupus, family Canidae; it is the chief ancestor of the domestic dog.
- Did you know that the last British wolf was shot in Scotland in the Fifteenth Century and that the last wolf living wild in England was trapped and killed nearly a thousand years ago?
- Wild dogs, especially the big wild dogs, are famously family oriented, and wolves are no exception.
- Only about 500 Ethiopian wolves remain in the wild, and the species has been ravaged by rabies epidemics at least twice in the recent past.
- Instead, rather intriguingly, it has become a grim battle of the superpowers, both engaged in a hard fight to keep the media wolves from their door.
- Again Ridge instantly screamed out breathless tales of a terrorist wolf, while the media slobbered at the door.
- Who do you feed to the media wolves?
- Note that the wolf waits until he gets her into bed before pouncing.
Synonyms
- He wolfed food the down, and then drank from the bowl of water that he had.
- It was perfect to dip naan bread in, and the pilau rice was wolfed down by Matt who seemed to enthuse about how special the chef's special was with every mouthful.
- If I'd have been a real man, I would have bought one of the six pound pie beasts, I would not have wolfed my snack in private.
Synonyms
Phrases
cry wolf
hold (or have) a wolf by the ears
keep the wolf from the door
throw someone to the wolves
a wolf in sheep's clothing
Derivatives
wolf-like
- Game rangers set traps to snare the wolf-like animals.
- There flourished a very wolf-like breed, the stout husky, reined in as it is to provide human transport by hauling sledges across frozen tundra.
- It's a big new mammal: a wolf-like creature of massive proportions with a bone-crunching jaw a metre long.
Origin
Old English wulf, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch wolf and German Wolf, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin lupus and Greek lukos. The verb dates from the mid 19th century.
The Indo-European root of wolf also gave rise to Greek lukos and Latin lupus, the source of lupine (mid 17th century), ‘like a wolf’. The Greek word gave us lycanthropy (mid 16th century), the mythical transformation of a person into a wolf or werewolf (Old English): the were- part of werewolf is probably from wer, the Old English word for ‘man’ or ‘person’, just as the second half of the Greek comes from anthropos ‘man’ (see world).
The story of the shepherd boy who thought it would be funny to cause a panic by falsely crying ‘wolf!’ is one of the fables of Aesop, the Greek storyteller of the 6th century bc. To keep the wolf from the door is to have enough money to avoid starvation: the phrase has been used since the 15th century. To throw someone to the wolves, or leave them to be roughly treated, is surprisingly recent though, being recorded only from the 1920s. The image here is of travellers on a sledge who are set upon by a pack of wolves, and decide to throw out one of their number to lighten the load and allow themselves to make their escape. A wolf in sheep's clothing is a person or thing that appears friendly or harmless but is really hostile. This comes from the Sermon on the Mount, as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus says: ‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's cloth, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’