wolf
/wʊlf/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.35 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any very ravenous, rapacious, or destructive person or thing; especially, want; starvation.
noun
One of the destructive, and usually hairy, larvae of several species of beetles and grain moths.
noun
A white worm which infests granaries, the larva of Nemapogon granella, a tineid moth.
noun
A wolf spider (Lycosidae spp.).
Example Sentences
- "He would listen quietly at meetings of the Politburo, or to distinguished visitors, puffing at his Dunhill pipe, doodling aimlessly - his secretaries Poskrebyshev and Dvinsky write that his pads were sometimes covered with the phrase ‘Lenin-teacher-friend’, but the last foreigner to visit him, in February 1953, noted that he was doodling wolves."
- "The soft violin solo was marred by persistent wolves."
- "They toiled hard to keep the wolf from the door."
- "the bee wolf"
- "“[…] Churchill, my dear fellow, we have such greedy sharks, and wolves in lamb's clothing. Oh, dear, there's so much to tell you, so many warnings to give you, but all that must be postponed for the moment.”"
- "If God should send a cancer upon thy face, or a wolf into thy side"
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *wl̥kʷós? Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos Proto-Germanic *wulfaz Proto-West Germanic *wulf Old English wulf Middle English wolf English wolf Inherited from Middle English wolf, from Old English wulf, ƿulf, from Proto-West Germanic *wulf, from Proto-Germanic *wulfaz, from Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos. Doublet of lobo and lupus. Cognates Cognate with Scots wouf, North Frisian wulew, Saterland Frisian and German Low German Wulf, West Frisian, Alemannic German, and Dutch wolf, Bavarian bolf, bölf, Woif, Cimbrian and Mòcheno bolf, German Wolf, Luxembourgish Wollef, Vilamovian wuf, Yiddish וואָלף (volf), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk ulv, Faroese úlvur, Icelandic úlfur, Swedish ulf, ulv, Gothic 𐍅𐌿𐌻𐍆𐍃 (wulfs); also Irish and Scottish Gaelic olc (“bad, evil”), Lepontic 𐌖𐌋𐌊𐌏𐌔 (ulkos), Manx olk (“bad”), Sanskrit वृक (vṛ́ka), Persian گرگ (gorg), Latgalian vylks, Latvian vìlks, Lithuanian vilkas, Belarusian воўк (vowk), Bulgarian вълк (vălk), Czech and Slovak vlk, Macedonian and Russian волк (volk), Polish wilk, Serbo-Croatian вук, vuk, Slovene volk, Ukrainian вовк (vovk), Albanian ujk, ulk, Latin lupus, Greek λύκος (lýkos), Hittite 𒉿𒀠𒆪𒉿𒀸, Lydian 𐤥𐤠𐤩𐤥𐤤 (walwe, “lion”), Tocharian B walkwe.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: wolf, wulf, *wulf, *wulfaz, *wĺ̥kʷos, -
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /wʊlf/
- British English: /wʊlf/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Law.