Word.ws English Dictionary

wannabes

wannabes is the plural of wannabe.

Meaning of wannabe

Noun

wannabe (plural wannabes)

  1. (attributive, derogatory, informal, often) Someone who wishes to be someone or do something, but lacks the qualifications or talent; an overeager amateur; an aspirant.
    • Hollywood's restaurants are full of wannabe actors waiting to be discovered.
  2. (derogatory, informal) Someone who wishes to be part of, or to assimilate to, a majority group of which they are not a member.
    • Bigger, mongrelly and black, he was clearly a Doberman wannabe.2000, Bill Oddie, Gripping Yarns, page 126

Questions about wannabes

What is wannabes the plural of?
Wannabes is the plural of wannabe.

Words near wannabes in the dictionary

  1. wanna-be
  2. wannabe
  3. wannabee
  4. wannabees
  5. wannabeism
  6. wannabes
  7. wannakai
  8. Wannamaker
  9. Wannamakers
  10. Wannan
  11. Wannans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wannabes (page history and authors); wannabe (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.

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