Wolf

Semitic k-zˀb “as a wolf” punning with “liar”

Wolves occur rarely in the Old Testament, presumably because the word had few suitable spooky puns.

One wolf occurence where I originally suspected a pun is in the 12 tribes riddle, where Benjamin is said to be a wolf (Genesis 49:27). The character is not a literal wolf, but he is like a wolf. KJV even translates “as a wolf”. If we were to spell it out in Hebrew, the phrase would be k-zˀb, meaning “as a wolf”, which puns with kzb for “lying” & “falsehood”. This corresponds to Ben-Yamin punning with bn-myn, which also means “liar”, because myn is a rare Semitic term for “lying” & “fabrication”.

However, when I finally got around to do an interlinear analysis, it seemed that there was no pun at all. Rather, the phrase reads: “the people are ravenous wolves [so we have to lie to them]”. The word bn-ymyn “Benjamin” here puns with bny-myn “people”, so in this text, he isn’t even one of the “tribes”. However, since spook texts often contain several layers of puns, it’s possible that the wolf ≈ liar pun belongs to another layer.

Germanic wolf punning with Latin velifer for “veiled”

The wolf suddenly becomes very popular in European fairy tales. Since most ancient texts & stories are veiled puns about spookery, the reason is likely that the word wolf in European languages is similar to some spooky word.

I suggest it’s Germanic / English wolf punning with Latin velifer / velificor, which means “bearing sail”, but also “bearing veil”, since the word was the same: velum. The M is swallowed in the compound, which makes the pun work. As some tales are very old, the ancient spooks may have found even the Latin versions close enough, perhaps something like ve luporum ≈ veliferum.

We can indirectly confirm this pun with the many tales where the wolf in the story disguises himself. This has absolutely nothing to do with the actual animal, so it may well be a pun.

• In Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf first feigns to be the girl towards the grandmother, then disguises himself as the grandmother — even putting on her clothes! It’s also notworthy that the girl has a hood in all versions, which plays no part whatsoever in the story, but puns with “cover-up” in many languages. The hood is also always red, which again has no meaning in the story, but puns with “disguise” in the Semitic languages.
• In The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats, the wolf disguises his voice with chalk to sound sweet, and then disguises his feet with flour to be white. In both cases, he uses white objects, as the color white puns with “mockery” in Hebrew. The victims may be goats, because the German word for goats is Ziegen, which puns with German zeigen for “show”, and with Hebrew יצג yṣg yitseg for “theatrical representation” (perhaps related to Isaac).
• In The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the boy pretends that there is a wolf when there’s really none.

French loup meaning “wolf” & “mask”

Another possible pun is the French word loup, which means “wolf”, and is also a term for an eye-mask. This is a very special word from a late epoch though, and apparently it’s derived from the wolf.

Latin lupus punning with Greek lopos for “shell”

Some parables about a disguised wolf may be older than proliferation of English, French or Germanic literature or vocabulary. The parable about a wolf in sheep’s clothing, where the wolf disguises himself as a sheep, is found already in the New Testament. A “wolf in sheep’s clothing” has even become a proverb in many languages.

This may be a multi-lingual pun from classical antiquity, of Latin lupus for “wolf”, with Greek lopos for “shell”. The New Testament contains much Roman & Greek vocabulary, so we can assume the Levantine elites spoke at least a bit of both languages. In either language of its own, the pun wouldn’t work.

(Another Latin-Greek wolf pun may be with lubeuo for “mockery”, but it doesn’t fit the sheepskin parable.)