Other forms: wolves
A wolf is a wild animal like a big dog that howls. A grey wolf, a wolf pack, the lone wolf.
Every domestic dog descends from it, and the split happened somewhere between fifteen and forty thousand years ago. Wolves were extinct in Britain by about the eighteenth century. The alpha wolf idea came from studying captives and has been retracted by the researcher who popularised it — wild packs are family groups led by parents. Note cry wolf; a wolf in sheep's clothing; and wolf down.
1nounwolfA wild animal like a large dog.
“We heard a wolf howling in the forest at night.”
2verbeatTo eat very fast.
“The hungry boy wolfed down his dinner and asked for more.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
wolf is an animal.
Old English wulf goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root shared with Latin lupus and Greek lykos. It is one of the oldest reconstructible animal names.
Middle English
wolf
English, today
wolf
From Middle English wolf. Middle English wolf, from Old English wulf, ƿulf, from Proto-West Germanic wulf, from Proto-Germanic wulfaz, from Proto-Indo-European wĺ̥kʷos. a doublet of lobo and lupus. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA