Word.ws English Dictionary

wantful

wantful adjective: full of want or lack; lacking; poor.

Adjective

wantful (comparative more wantful, superlative most wantful)

  1. Full of want or lack; lacking; poor.
    • Nor rank, nor wealth, I ask, but let me be Above contempt, and wantful poverty.1807, Robert Southey, Specimens of the later English poets
  2. Full of want or desire; desirous.
    • Greaves's soul had up to that moment been "wantful, lustful,” and "working actively in lower regions,” but now it became “receptive of Spirit from the higher elements.2010, Richard Francis, Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia

Antonyms of wantful

Forms of wantful

comparativemore wantful
superlativemost wantful

Origin of wantful

From want + -ful. Compare wishful, wistful, etc.

Words formed from wantful

Questions about wantful

What does wantful mean?
Wantful means full of want or lack; lacking; poor.
What part of speech is wantful?
Wantful is an adjective.

Words near wantful in the dictionary

  1. wanter
  2. wanters
  3. wantes
  4. wantest
  5. wanteth
  6. wantful
  7. wantfulness
  8. wanthriven
  9. wanties
  10. wantin'
  11. wanting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wantful (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:

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