A: Mary is complaining about her headache again. Is she really sick or is she just crying wolf?

B: Perhaps she’s really sick. She doesn’t look well.

Note: This idiom means “to give a false alarm.” In “Aesop’s Fables,” a boy was asked to shepherd a flock of sheep and was told to cry “Wolf!” when he saw wolves coming to pounce on the sheep. And so the boy cried “Wolf!” out loud and often — when there weren’t any wolves to be seen. Perhaps he was just happy to see the way villagers rush in, brandishing sticks and knives, to help. He was lonely and this must have been fun for him. The long and short of it is, villagers soon grew tired of his antics and no one responded to his cries when wolves did arrive.