wolves

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of wolf.

   A line of wolves moved silently along the ridge at dusk.

   Researchers tracked the wolves through three frozen river valleys.

   Note

   The f of wolf turns to v before the plural ending, the same shift heard in leaf and leaves or knife and knives. One plural serves every sense of the noun: animals moving along a ridge, men who chase many women, rapacious people, grain-eating larvae, even wolf notes. The identical spelling is also a verb form meaning "devours", so only context tells you which one you are reading.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of wolve. Rare; for eating greedily the usual form is wolfs.

   Note

   Three different uses of wolve stand behind this form. An organ wolves when it gives a hollow, wolflike whine. A person wolves when behaving like a wolf. Someone wolves a meal in a rare variant of the verb wolf, the only transitive use and the one most readers will meet. The spelling is shared with the plural of the animal, so a following object usually marks the verb.

3. 3
   nounobsoletegenitive

   Genitive (possessive) form of wolf.

   Fab[le]. CLV. A Shepherd and a Wolves Whelp. A Shepherd took a Sucking Whelp of a Wolfe, and Train’d it up with his Dogs.

   1692, Roger L’Estrange, “[The Fables of Æsop, &c.] Fab[le] CLV. A Shepherd and a Wolves Whelp.”

   Lŭpātus, a, um, Bridled with a ſharp bit, Sharp like a Wolves teeth.

   1679, Elisha Coles, A Dictionary

   Note

   A possessive written without an apostrophe, and singular despite its look. In Roger L'Estrange's Aesop of 1692, "a Wolves Whelp" is one wolf's cub, as the fable itself goes on to say "a Sucking Whelp of a Wolfe." Elisha Coles writes "a Wolves teeth" in 1679 in the same way. Apostrophe-s later displaced the form. Modern English writes wolf's, and readers of older texts should not mistake this form for a plural.

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