Name: English Tutor Nick P Word Origins (32) Cry Wolf
Uploaded: 2019-05-08T14:31:18.000Z
Duration: 2 min 37 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins 32. The word origin today is to

cry wolf. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone cries wolf he or

Adverbs of degree

she cries or complains about something when there is really no problem or no

serious problem. If they do this too often this eventually results in other

people not believing or trusting someone anymore. So they are no longer willing to

help. Okay. Let's continue. The origin of cry wolf comes directly from an Aesop

fable called \"The Boy Who Cried Wolf. \" According to the

story,  a boy was given the responsibility of looking after the Sheep. During the

night the boy considered this job to be very, very boring. Okay.

Just for fun he decided to pretend he was in danger. You know he needed some

excitement and it's too boring  Yeah. Let's see what happens if I cry wolf. Kind of

like that. So he decided to cry out \"Wolf,  wolf \" kind of like that. When the people

heard his cries they rushed to help him.  However they soon learned this was just

a joke and they probably weren't very happy about that. The boy foolishly

repeated this several times and finally the people stopped listening to him. Yeah.

So when a real wolf came and the boy and the sheep were truly in danger,  were

really in danger,  nobody trusted or responded to his calls anymore. So we

hear this a lot we always tell somebody \" don't cry wolf . \" You know only call

people when you really need them or when it's a real situation. So All right. And

let's just look at one example we have here. If you keep yelling for help

over such minor issues ..you know not very important issues , no one is going to want

to help you anymore.  You cannot cry wolf and expect people to

take you seriously. Okay. Anyway so this is the real origin of it.  I hope you got it.

I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.