wild

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Living or growing in nature, not kept or raised by people.

   We saw wild horses running across the plain.

2. 2
   adj

   Out of control; not calm or restrained.

   The crowd went wild when the band came on stage.

3. 3
   noun

   A natural area far from towns and people.

   They spent a week camping out in the wild.

4. 4
   adj

   Feeling a very strong emotion such as anger or excitement.

   She was wild with anger when she heard the news.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Wild comes from Old English, where its earliest sense was “not tame or domesticated.” Wilderness is related and literally referred to land inhabited only by wild animals, from Old English wild dēor, “wild deer.” Wold and weald, words for wooded uplands, probably share the same root.

From Middle English wild, wilde, from Old English wilde, from Proto-West Germanic *wilþī, from Proto-Germanic *wilþijaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂welh₁- (“hair, wool, grass, ear (of corn), forest”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian wyld, Dutch wild, German wild, Danish vild, Swedish vild, Norwegian vill, Icelandic villtur.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary