Word.ws English Dictionary

want to know

want to know verb: to ask (used as a dialogue marker or introductory statement).

Verb

want to know (third-person singular simple present wants to know, present participle wanting to know, simple past and past participle wanted to know)

  1. (idiomatic) To ask (used as a dialogue marker or introductory statement).
    • I want to know, have you ever seen the rain / Comin' down on a sunny day?1970, John Fogerty (Creedence Clearwater Revival), "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"
    • "What do you see?" Thayet wanted to know.1988, Tamora Pierce, Lioness Rampant,, page 114

Forms of want to know

third-person singular presentwants to know
present participlewanting to know
past participlewanted to know
pastwanted to know

Questions about want to know

What does want to know mean?
Want to know means to ask (used as a dialogue marker or introductory statement).
What part of speech is want to know?
Want to know is a verb.
What is the past tense of want to know?
The past tense of want to know is wanted to know.

Words near want to know in the dictionary

  1. want one's bumps felt
  2. want out
  3. want someone's nachos
  4. want to
  5. want to bet
  6. want to know
  7. want'cha
  8. want-away
  9. want-aways
  10. want-to
  11. want-to-be

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: want to know (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-want to know.wav.

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