Word.ws English Dictionary

wantonry

wantonry noun: the state of being wanton.

Noun

wantonry (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) The state of being wanton.
    • Now hold your tongues for charity, / my nobles knights and ladies free, / And listen to my spell, / To battle and to chivalry / And making love in wantonry / For such is what I tell.1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Tale of Sir Topaz”, in Nevill Coghill, transl., The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 200

Origin of wantonry

From wanton + -ry.

Questions about wantonry

What does wantonry mean?
Wantonry means the state of being wanton.
What part of speech is wantonry?
Wantonry is a noun.

Words near wantonry in the dictionary

  1. wantonizing
  2. wantonly
  3. wantonness
  4. wantonnesse
  5. wantonnesses
  6. wantonry
  7. wantons
  8. wantrepreneur
  9. wantrepreneurs
  10. Wantroba
  11. wantrust

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wantonry (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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