wantum
wantum verb: to want.
Verb
wantum
- To want.
- Then he have wongie along Sargint in office feller. White blackfeller wantum know 'bout old Sarah, an' Sargint he tellum she goodoh.1998, Arthur W. Upfield, The Bone is Pointed, →ISBN, page 82
- Oh, ah — er — me wantum Chinkie just come in.2003, Thomas Burke, More Limehouse Nights, →ISBN, page 126
Noun
wantum (plural wantums)
- A quantifiable deficiency or desire
- Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.1938, Samuel Beckett, Murphy
- A projection of “Wantum” requires, in the Couple, a reciprocal agreement on the part of the other to allow more than his own portion of Wantum to be discovered in him or herself.1993, Harold N. Boris, Passions of the Mind: Unheard Melodies, →ISBN
Examples of wantum in a sentence
- To use Wylie's phraseology: the quantum of this particular discursive wantum cannot vary.2004, Anthony Uhlmann, Sjef Houppermans, Bruno Clément, After Beckett, →ISBN, page 249:
- The desire to find something could provoke what she called 'wantum mechanics,' fishing a result out of nothing but noise.2014, Gregory Benford, Gregory Benford SF Gateway Omnibus: Artifact, Cosm, Eater, →ISBN:
Forms of wantum
| plural | wantums |
|---|
Origin of wantum
Eye dialect for want 'em.
Blend of want + quantum, coined by Irish writer Samuel Beckett.
Questions about wantum
- What does wantum mean?
- Wantum means to want.
- How do you use wantum in a sentence?
- To use Wylie's phraseology: the quantum of this particular discursive wantum cannot vary.
- What part of speech is wantum?
- Wantum can be a verb or a noun.
Words near wantum in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wantum (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: “wantum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wantum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.