The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Francis Barlow's illustration of the fable, 1687

The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 210 in the Perry Index.[1] From it is derived the English idiom "to cry wolf", defined as "to give a false alarm" in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable[2] and glossed by the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning to make false claims, with the result that subsequent true claims are disbelieved.[3]

  1. ^ "151. The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf' (Laura Gibbs, translator)". mythfolklore.net.
  2. ^ The Concise Dictionary...(Cassel Publications 1992)
  3. ^ "wolf". Compact Oxford English Dictionary. askoxford.com. OUP. June 2005. Archived from the original on December 1, 2008. Retrieved 19 September 2007.