wolf / woŏlf/ • n. (pl. wolves / woŏlvz/ ) 1. a wild carnivorous mammal that is the largest member of the dog family, living and hunting in packs. It is native to both Eurasia and North America, but has been widely exterminated. • Canis lupus, family Canidae; it is the chief ancestor of the domestic dog. ∎  used in names of similar or related mammals, e.g., maned wolf, Tasmanian wolf.2. used in similes and metaphors to refer to a rapacious, ferocious, or voracious person or thing. ∎ inf. a man who habitually seduces women.3. a harsh or out-of-tune effect produced when playing particular notes or intervals on a musical instrument, caused either by the instrument's construction or by divergence from equal temperament.• v. [tr.] devour (food) greedily: he wolfed down his breakfast.PHRASES: cry wolf call for help when it is not needed, with the effect that one is not believed when one really does need help.hold (or have) a wolf by the ears be in a precarious position.keep the wolf from the door have enough money to avert hunger or starvation (used hyperbolically): I work part-time to pay the mortgage and keep the wolf from the door.throw someone to the wolves leave someone to be roughly treated or criticized without trying to help or defend them.a wolf in sheep's clothing a person or thing that appears friendly or harmless but is really hostile.DERIVATIVES: wolf·ish adj.wolf·ish·ly adv.wolf·like / -ˌlīk/ adj.ORIGIN: Old English wulf, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch wolf and German Wolf, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin lupus and Greek lukos. The verb dates from the mid 19th cent.

WOLF

WOLF , U.S. family of communal leaders with branches in Philadelphia and Washington. The brothers elias wolf (1820–after 1881) and abraham and levi wolf (1811–1893) were born in Bavaria and emigrated to the United States. Elias Wolf arrived about 1840, going to Philadelphia. He obtained a good education, particularly in Hebrew. After a few years he went to Wilmington, North Carolina, and in 1850 to Ulrichsville, Ohio. He settled permanently in Philadelphia in 1856, where with his brothers he managed the family manufacturing interests. The family established and kept a close association with Rodeph Shalom Congregation, with Elias Wolf serving as vice president in 1867 and as president in 1871.

All of Elias Wolf's five sons took part in communal life in Philadelphia. edwin (1855–1934) was born in Ulrichsville a year before his father returned to Philadelphia for good. He was educated in public schools and then joined his father's business, taking over when the latter retired in 1877. Subsequently he left the firm due to ill health and in the 1880s worked with his brothers in their various enterprises. In later life he held a number of civic and communal positions, serving on the Philadelphia Board of Education, to which he was elected in 1901, as president of the Jewish Publication Society from 1903 to 1913, and as chairman of the Board of Governors of Dropsie College.

Edwin Wolf's son morris (1883–1978) was born in Philadelphia. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1903. For more than 50 years he was a senior partner of the well-known firm of Wolf, Block, Schorr, and Solis-Cohen in Philadelphia, which he had founded in 1903. He served as assistant district attorney for the city of Philadelphia in 1909–10, as state deputy attorney general in 1913–14, and as a member of the Court of Common Pleas after 1930. One of his legal clients was the noted book dealer Abraham Simon Wolf *Rosenbach. Morris became a prominent bibliophile and book collector in his own right as a result of his contacts with Rosenbach.

Morris' son edwin wolf ii (1911–1991) was a librarian, historian of U.S. Jews, and bibliographer. At age 18 he began a long association with Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach, preparing most of the catalogs for the Rosenbach Company. Toward the end of his years with Rosenbach (to 1952), whose career he describes in Rosenbach: A Biography (1960), he managed the Philadelphia office of the firm. During World War ii he served in military intelligence as a French and German interpreter and in counterintelligence. After he left the Rosenbach Company in 1952, he became librarian for the Library Company of Philadelphia (from 1953 to 1984), the oldest subscription library in the United States, with extensive Judaica holdings. In addition to his work in preserving the documents of the past, Wolf was also instrumental in presenting new works through the Jewish Publication Society of America. Elected a trustee in 1935 "in place of his grandfather," as he notes in one of his elegantly concise annual reports (see American Jewish Year Book), he served as president (1954–59) and from 1965 as chairman of the publications committee.

Edwin Wolf ii wrote History of the Jews of Philadelphia from Colonial Times to the Age of Jackson (1957), with Maxwell Whiteman; Philadelphia: Portrait of an American City (1975); and many monographs. His catalogs include Descriptive Catalogue of the John Frederick Lewis Collection of European Manuscripts (1937); William Blake 1757 – 1827 (1939), prepared with Elizabeth Mongan, William Blake's Illuminated Books: A Census (1953; repr. 1968), edited jointly with Geoffrey Keynes; Bibliothesauri: Or Jewels from the Shelves of the Library Company of Philadelphia (1966); A Flock of Beautiful Birds (1977); and Legacies of Genius: A Celebration of Philadelphia Libraries (1988).

[Claire Sotnick and

Hillel Halkin]

wolf in figurative and allusive use, the wolf is often taken as the type of savagery and rapacity, explicitly or implicitly contrasted with the meek and vulnerable sheep. From the mid 19th century, the term has also been used as an informal designation of a sexually aggressive male.

A wolf is the emblem of St Edmund the Martyr, St Francis of Assisi, and (as a play on his name) the 10th-century Swabian bishop St Wolfgang.
cry wolf call for help when it is not needed, with the effect that one is not believed when one really does need help, with allusion to the fable of the shepherd boy who deluded people with false cries of ‘Wolf!’; when he was actually attacked and killed, his genuine appeals for help were ignored.
have a wolf by the ears be in a precarious position; the expression is of classical origin, and means that the present situation can neither be maintained nor safely ended.
keep the wolf from the door have enough money to avert hunger or starvation; the wolf here is a type of something that will devour and destroy, as hunger or famine.
wolf in sheep's clothing a person or thing that appears friendly or harmless but is really hostile; often with biblical allusion to Matthew 7:15, ‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’
wolf's head an archaic term for an outlaw, from cry wolf's head, in Anglo-Saxon England uttering a cry for the pursuit of an outlaw as one to be hunted down like a wolf.

See also hunger drives the wolf out of the wood, throw someone to the wolves.

WOLF

WOLF (Heb. זְאֵב), the Canis lupis, is frequently mentioned in the Bible and rabbinical literature as a wicked and cruel beast (Ezek. 22:27) found in desert regions (Jer. 5:6) which seizes its prey at night (Zeph. 3:3; Hab. 1:8). Wolves were a serious danger to flocks of sheep (cf. Isa. 11:6). The Mishnah states that "when there is a visitation of wolves," i.e., when they appear in packs, the shepherd cannot be held liable for the loss of the sheep of which he is in charge (bm 7:9). Wolves are stated on an occasion to have killed 300 sheep (tj, Beẓah 1:160a), and to have torn to pieces two children in Transjordan (Ta'an. 3:6). The wolf is like a big sheep dog (cf. Ber. 9b). According to the Mishnah, "a wolf and a dog," though similar, constitute *mixed species (Kil. 1:6). Even in recent times wolves have been known to attack flocks of sheep in Ereẓ Israel. It can get into the fold and strangle a number of sheep (on occasions sucking their blood, cf. Ezek. 22:27), but it carries off only one sheep, sometimes carrying it a considerable distance to its lair in the mountains of Transjordan. The Midrash to Psalms 10:14 mentions the legend of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf.

bibliography:

S. Bodenheimer, Ha-Ḥai be-Arẓot ha-Mikra, 2 vols. (1949–56), index; J. Feliks, Animal World of the Bible (1962), 35. add. bibliography: Feliks, Ha-Ẓome'aḥ, 223.

[Jehuda Feliks]

wolf Wild, dog-like carnivorous mammal, once widespread in the USA and Eurasia, especially the grey wolf (Canis lupus), which is now restricted to the USA and Asia. It is powerfully built, with a deep-chested body and a long, bushy tail. It has earned a reputation for savagery and cunning from occasional attacks on livestock and human beings. Length: to 2m (6.6ft), including the tail. Family Canidae.