Wolf

How to spell wolf

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wolf

What does wolf mean?

1. nounA large wild member of the dog family that hunts in packs.
2. verbTo eat something quickly and greedily.

Wolf in a sentence

• noun

  The farmer feared a wolf might attack his sheep at night.

• verb

  He would wolf his lunch in under five minutes between meetings.

• noun

  A lone wolf tracked the deer across the snowy ridge.

• verb

  She tends to wolf down her dinner whenever she is running late.

Where does wolf come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wolf is a thoroughly native English word, descending directly from Old English wulf, the name for the wild canine that once roamed the forests of northern Europe. It traces back to a common Germanic ancestor, reconstructed as wulfaz, which also gave German Wolf, Dutch wolf and Old Norse ulfr; beyond that lies an Indo-European root that linguists link to Latin lupus and Greek lykos, both meaning the same animal. Because the creature was feared and respected, the word fed into many old personal names, such as Wulfric and Adolf (literally 'noble wolf'), and into the surname Wolfe. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years, keeping the 'o' that is actually pronounced like a short 'oo', which is the small trap for a modern writer. The plural 'wolves', where the f turns to v, is the only real complication this otherwise plain word offers.

How the word is built

• wolf (from Old English wulf: the wild canine animal)