Crying wolf?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Crying wolf?

Indeed, the spirit of the story is universal, and certainly identifiable to anyone from any race or culture.

Anyways, today, crying wolf has become synonymous with anyone raising a false alarm, especially to attract attention.

Let’s use the British Sunday newspapers as an example. If, for instance, a big storm is forecast for this coming weekend, a Sunday newspaper may not mind calling for, say, 10,000 residents to be evacuated, you know, quoting some expert or other as saying the storm is going to be the biggest in 40 years, or such like.

They might be forced to retract and apologize later to the public that they cried wolf – exaggerated its danger – but at the time of publishing a story, they would never hesitate to sensationalize it in order to sell the copy.

Alright? Oh, one more thing. If you ever use this expression, make sure you use it on people who are prone to commit the deed more than once. People who cry wolf, you see, tend to cry wolf a lot. In other words, they usually are recidivists – if, that is, wolf-crying is a serious crime.

All right. Here are media examples:

1. The White House and congressional Democrats are back to their old tricks—squabbling and insulting each other. This time, it’s over legislation designed to modernize techniques used to keep track of suspected terrorists. President Bush is demanding immediate updating of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, arguing that further delay might allow dire threats to go undetected.