a. Also 8 woolf-. [f. WOLF sb. + -ISH1. Cf. MHG. wolfisch, and WOLVISH.]
1. Of or pertaining to a wolf or wolves.
1570. Levins, Manip., 146/8. Wolfish, lupinus.
1687. Dryden, Hind & P., I. 160. The wolfish race, Appear with belly Gaunt, and famish’d face.
1690. C. Nesse, O. & N. Test., I. 213. Ye may beat a wolf … yet all this will not drive away his wolfish nature.
1868. Cornh. Mag., July, 70. He never could make out what became of the bristles that ornamented him in his wolfish state.
1890. C. F. Gordon Cumming, in Temple Bar, Nov., 355. So vigorously had the wolfish tribe been hunted down that only one couple survived.
b. Abounding in wolves. nonce-use.
1747. Collins, Ode Liberty, 72. Where Orcas howls, his wolfish mountains rounding.
2. Characteristic of, befitting, or resembling that of, a wolf.
1674. Govt. Tongue, viii. 146. All the wolfish designs walk under this sheeps clothing.
1750. Lardner, Wks. (1838), III. 79. His … unsociable and wolfish disposition.
1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes, vi. Grope your way with me into this wolfish den.
1848. Lytton, Harold, VII. v. The eyes of the three men, with a fierce and wolfish glare.
3. Resembling a wolf, wolf-like.
1775. Adair, Amer. Indians, 259. To keep the [Indian] wolf from our own doors, by engaging him with his wolfish neighbours.
1854. J. S. C. Abbott, Napoleon (1855), II. xiv. 242. Swarms of Cossacks, on fleet and wolfish horses.
b. Ravenously hungry. U.S. colloq.
[1842. [Martin & Aytoun] (‘Bon Gaultier’), in Fraser’s Mag., Dec., 652/2. My appetite was growing decidedly wolfish.]
1848. Bartlett, Dict. Amer., Wolfish, savage, savagely hungry.
1894. Fenn, In Alpine Valley, II. 133. I’m wolfish.
4. Comb., as wolfish-faced, -looking, -visaged adjs.
c. 1779. Crabbe, Midnight, 295. Avarice … A Woolfish-Visag’d Fiend.
1851. Mayne Reid, Scalp Hunters, xxvii. [The animal] is wolfish-looking.
1894. Mrs. Croker, Village Tales (1896), 162. The wolfish-faced crowd had melted away.
Hence Wolfishly adv.; Wolfishness.
1676. Marvell, Mr. Smirke, 66. The Wolfishness of those which … ought to have been the Christian Pastors, but went on scattering their Flocks, if not devouring.
1831. J. Wilson, in Blackw. Mag., XXIX. 703. The Red Rover yowls wolfishly to the moon.
1842. Borrow, Bible in Spain, xl. Wolfishly eager for booty.
1890. J. Pulsford, Loyalty to Christ, I. 205. Compare … the consummate wolfishness of Christian Europe with the simpler wolfishness of heathen nations.
