Meaning:
Someone who hides malicious intent under the guise of kindliness.
Background:
The cautionary advice that one cannot necessarily trust someone who appears
kind and friendly has been with us for many centuries. Both Aesop's Fables
and the Bible contain explicit references to wolves in sheep's clothing. On
the face of it, Aesop must have originated the phrase as his tales are much
older than any biblical text.
The version of Aesop's Fables that is best known to us today is George Fyler
Townsend's 1867 translation, in which he gives the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
fable this way:
Once upon a time a Wolf resolved to disguise his appearance in order to
secure food more easily. Encased in the skin of a sheep, he pastured with
the flock deceiving the shepherd by his costume. In the evening he was shut
up by the shepherd in the fold; the gate was closed, and the entrance made
thoroughly secure. But the shepherd, returning to the fold during the night
to obtain meat for the next day, mistakenly caught up the Wolf instead of a
sheep, and killed him instantly.
The King James Version of the Bible, 1611, gives this warning in Matthew 7:15:
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly they are ravening wolves.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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The idiom did smell ancient and even Aesop or the Bible but it first reminded me
of a gabber who called his political opponent, a post-WWII British PM, "a sheep
in sheep's clothing" and "a modest little man with plenty to be modest about."
