means A large wild carnivore of the dog family that lives and hunts in cooperative packs across the northern hemisphere.

from From Old English 'wulf,' tracing back through Proto-Germanic '*wulfaz' (also the source of German 'Wolf' and Norse 'úlfr') to the Proto-Indo-European root '*wlkwos.' That ancient root scattered the animal across half the world's languages — it's a cousin of Latin 'lupus' and Greek 'lykos' (giving us 'lupine' and 'lycanthrope'). So old and so feared a creature that it haunted personal names — Old English 'Wulf-' prefixes like Wulfric and Beowulf — long before it haunted fairy tales.