Word.ws English Dictionary

in the wild

in the wild prepositional phrase: living and roaming freely in nature; not domesticated.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (usually) Living and roaming freely in nature; not domesticated.
    • But during its lifetime, a single macaw left in the wild might yield more than 16 times as much in tourist income.2008, G. Tyler Miller, Scott Spoolman, Sustaining the Earth: an integrated approach, page 107
  2. (figuratively) At large.
    • A new, deadly type of virus has been detected in the wild.2006, Wally Wang, Steal this computer book 4.0: what they won't tell you about the Internet
    • Many of the exploits discovered by cyber security researchers are often found and patched before the public is even made aware of the problem or actual exploits are found out in the wild.2020 October 25, Marco Chiappetta, “Update Google Chrome And Chrome OS Now To Fix This Newly Discovered Exploit”, in Forbes
  3. (figuratively) In practical use, as opposed to in a dictionary or wordlist.
    • This word is very rare; it may be difficult to find usages of it in the wild.
  4. (figuratively) By coincidence in the course of everyday life.
    • I'd seen this stock photo in memes a hundred times, but yesterday I saw it in the wild, illustrating a magazine article.

Questions about in the wild

What does in the wild mean?
In the wild means living and roaming freely in nature; not domesticated.
What part of speech is in the wild?
In the wild is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in the wild in the dictionary

  1. in the wake of
  2. in the wars
  3. in the way
  4. in the way of
  5. in the weeds
  6. in the wild
  7. in the wind
  8. in the wind's eye
  9. in the wink of an eye
  10. in the works
  11. in the world

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in the wild (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-in the wild.wav.

Cite this entry: “in the wild.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_the_wild. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.