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PlainSpell

wolf

/wʊlf/noun, verb

wolf is spelled W-O-L-F. The wrong spelling people search most is wolp: about 60 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 526 of all searches for the word. Wolf is a noun meaning “Canis lupus; the largest wild member of the canine subfamily”. The plural of wolf is wolves.

How many letters and syllables are in wolf?

Letters4: W-O-L-F
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing22 times per million words; the 3,939th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, wolp, about 60 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell wolf?

Wolf is spelled W-O-L-F. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 537 of the searches for wolf in either form.

wolfthe right spelling32,170 searches a month
wolpp in place of f60 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is wolf?

Wolf appears 22 times per million words in written English, the 3,939th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce wolf?

  • UK /wʊlf/
  • US /wʊlf/
  • US [wʊɫf]

Wolf has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-a_wolf.ogg, En-us-wolf.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with wolf?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as wolf (/ʊlf/).

Spelled with the same letters in another order: flow, fowl.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of wolf

  • wolves plural
  • wolfs present, singular, he/she/it
  • wolfing participle, present
  • wolfed participle, past
  • wolve rare

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does wolf mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    Canis lupus; the largest wild member of the canine subfamily.

  2. 2

    Any of several related canines that resemble Canis lupus in appearance, especially those of the genus Canis.

  3. 3

    A man who makes amorous advances to many women.

  4. 4

    A wolf tone or wolf note.

    The soft violin solo was marred by persistent wolves.

  5. 5

    Any very ravenous, rapacious, or destructive person or thing; especially, want; starvation.

    They toiled hard to keep the wolf from the door.

  6. 6

    One of the destructive, and usually hairy, larvae of several species of beetles and grain moths.

  7. 7

    A white worm which infests granaries, the larva of Nemapogon granella, a tineid moth.

  8. 8

    A wolf spider (Lycosidae spp.).

verb

  1. 1

    To devour; to gobble; to eat (something) voraciously.

  2. 2

    slangTo make amorous advances to many women; to hit on women; to cruise for sex.

  3. 3

    To hunt for wolves.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Wolf in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchloup (animal), tombeur (man who makes amorous advances on many women), dévorer, engloutir (to devour)
GermanWolf, Meister Graubein, Woif (animal), herunterschlingen (to devour)
Portugueselobo (animal), mulherengo (man who makes amorous advances on many women), devorar (to devour)
Spanishlobo (animal), mujeriego (man who makes amorous advances on many women), devorar, engullir (to devour)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does wolf come from?

Inherited from Middle English wolf, from Old English wulf, ƿulf, from Proto-West Germanic *wulf, from Proto-Germanic *wulfaz, from Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos. Doublet of lobo and lupus.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after wolf