# homo homini lupus

idiom · CEFR C2 · Academic

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/homo-homini-lupus
Updated: 2026-08-03

## Meaning

Man is a wolf to man — people are dangerous to each other.

## Examples

- After a week of watching the news he muttered homo homini lupus and turned it off.
- The lecture used homo homini lupus as its epigraph and spent an hour arguing against it.
- Hobbes made homo homini lupus the foundation of an argument for absolute authority, which is a considerable weight to hang on a line spoken by a merchant in a Roman farce who simply did not want to lend money to somebody he had never met.

## Origin

The line comes from a comedy. In Plautus's Asinaria a merchant refuses to hand money to a stranger, and explains: a man is a wolf to a man, not a man, when he doesn't know what sort he is. That last clause matters and is almost always dropped. Plautus is not saying that people are wolves; he is saying that people are wolves to strangers, which is a claim about the absence of information rather than about human nature. Thomas Hobbes quoted the shortened version in 1651 and made it a slogan for the state of nature, and it has been used that way ever since — usually by someone arguing that only force or law keeps people from each other's throats.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.