The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
The perfect disguise — until the wrong person believes it.
B2 · C1 · idiom: a wolf in sheep's clothing
The story
There was once a wolf who was always hungry. Every day he lay in the long grass at the edge of the field and watched the flock — plump, slow, close enough to smell — and every day, he went hungry still. Because the field was guarded. The shepherd watched from the hill, the dogs never slept, and the moment a grey shape broke cover, the alarm went up and the whole flock scattered.
The problem, he realised, was simple. Everyone could see exactly what he was.
So he found the skin of a sheep, and he pulled it over himself like a coat — over his grey fur, over his sharp teeth — until, to anyone who didn't look too closely, he was just another sheep.
And it worked.
He walked in among the flock, and no alarm came. The dogs trotted past and smelled nothing. Even the shepherd, counting his sheep against the evening light, counted the wolf as one of them.
He was standing in the middle of his dinner, and not one of them knew.
So he waited. He could afford to — a patient animal, in no hurry at all. He would pick his moment, and no one would ever understand what had happened to the flock.
That evening, the shepherd came down into the field.
He wanted meat for his own table — one good sheep, a plump one, killed and dressed before dark. He walked in among the flock, looking them over, and reached for the fattest animal within arm's reach.
His hand closed on the wolf.
And there was nothing the wolf could do. He could not cry out that they had it wrong, could not explain, could not shed the skin he'd been so proud of. He had made himself look exactly like a plump, silent sheep — and now he was one, in the only pair of eyes that mattered.
The disguise had fooled the whole field. It fooled, at the last, the one man he most needed to see through it.
“And the lesson is this: the disguise you put on to fool others doesn’t care who it fools — and one day it works against the very person you can’t afford to trick.”
Words worth keeping
a wolf in sheep's clothing — the idiom from this story: a dangerous person hiding behind a harmless, friendly appearance. "He seems charming, but he's a wolf in sheep's clothing."
to take someone at face value — to accept someone as they appear, without looking deeper. "Don't take him at face value — find out what he actually wants."
an ulterior motive — a hidden reason for doing something, different from the one you show. "She was so helpful that I started to wonder if she had an ulterior motive."
Test yourself
Five quick questions on The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
Before you go
This is the dangerous one — the person who seems kind and helpful until you work out what they were really after. Have you ever dealt with a wolf in sheep's clothing?
Tell me in the comments on YouTube