want
//wɒnt//
informalForms
- present (v1)
- want
- past (v2)
- wanted
- past participle (v3)
- wanted
- present participle
- wanting
- 3rd person singular
- wants
- Plural
- wants
Definitions
1.To wish for or desire (something); to feel a need or desire for; to crave, hanker, or demand.
- I want you as a friend, not a foe.
- What do you want to eat? I want you to leave. I never wanted to go back to live with my mother.
- I want to find a supermarket., Oh, okay. The supermarket is at 1500 Irving Street. It is near the apartment.: Great!
2.To wish, desire, or demand to see, have the presence of or do business with.
- Danish police want him for embezzlement.
- But now it's different, if the police want him for murder.
- Ma’am, you are exactly the professional we want for this job.
3.To desire (to experience desire); to wish.
- You can leave if you want.
4.To be advised to do something (compare should, ought).(colloquial)
- You’ll want to repeat this three or four times to get the best result.
1.A desire, wish, longing.
- After a search which produced most of the things on our wants list, we went down to picnic on the shore in the sunshine-with a good stretch of shingle behind us over which no triffid could approach unheard.
2.Lack, absence, deficiency.
- She showed a want of caution in renting her house to complete strangers.
- They are wet with the showres of the mountaines, and imbrace the rocke for want of a shelter.
3.Poverty.
- Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.
4.Something needed or desired; a thing of which the loss is felt.
- Habitual superfluities become actual wants.
Frequency
Overall
Very common· #68
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Very common
- General reading & writing
- Very common
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Uncommon
Related words
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English wanten (“to lack, to need”), from Old Norse vanta (“to lack”), from Proto-Germanic *wanatōną (“to be wanting, lack”), from *wanô (“lack, deficiency”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- (“empty”).