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Cry wolf

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

To raise a false alarm, leading others to ignore real danger when it comes.

Detailed Definition
From Aesop’s fable, where a shepherd boy’s repeated lies cause villagers to dismiss his genuine cry when a wolf attacks. In poetry, it warns against credibility loss, propaganda, or societal desensitization—especially relevant in war or climate crisis verse. Poets like W.H. Auden reference it to critique political rhetoric or media fatigue. The idiom’s narrative origin makes it adaptable to allegorical forms, underscoring consequences of deceit. Its moral clarity resonates in didactic or cautionary poems, where trust, once broken, becomes a thematic casualty alongside physical threat.
Example
Example in poetry:
Aesop’s fable echoes in wartime verse: “He cried wolf so often, none came when the tanks rolled in”; Climate poetry: “Scientists cried wolf for decades—now the floods are real, and ears are stone”; In a trust poem: “Once bitten by false alarms, we ignore even true cries—wolf or not”; Satire: “Politicians cry wolf about crises, then profit from the panic they fake”.
Additional Notes
From Aesop’s fable, where a shepherd boy’s lies cause villagers to ignore his real cry when a wolf attacks. In poetry, it warns against credibility loss—especially relevant in climate or political verse where repeated false alarms breed desensitization. Auden references it to critique propaganda fatigue. The idiom’s narrative origin makes it adaptable to allegorical forms, underscoring how trust, once broken, becomes a thematic casualty alongside physical threat in cautionary poems about truth and consequence.
Also Known As
Raise false alarms
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