Word.ws English Dictionary

waywardness

/ˈweɪ.wə(ɹ)d.nəs/

waywardness noun: the state or quality of being wayward.

Noun

waywardness (countable and uncountable, plural waywardnesses)

  1. The state or quality of being wayward.
    • He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness.1820 March 5, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., number VI, New York, N.Y.: […] C[ornelius] S. Van Winkle...
    • Heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of an April breeze, which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of moods...1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter XV, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC

waywardness meaning in Urdu and Bengali

waywardness in Urdu

آوارگی, البیلا پن, خودسری

waywardness in Bengali

waywardness; indiscipline; reckless or frivolous behaviour
বেলেল্লাপনা belelˈlāponā

Forms of waywardness

pluralwaywardnesses

Origin of waywardness

From wayward + -ness.

Questions about waywardness

What does waywardness mean?
Waywardness means the state or quality of being wayward.
What is waywardness in Urdu?
Waywardness in Urdu is آوارگی, البیلا پن, خودسری. See Waywardness meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is waywardness?
Waywardness is a noun.
How do you pronounce waywardness?
Waywardness is pronounced /ˈweɪ.wə(ɹ)d.nəs/.
What is the plural of waywardness?
The plural of waywardness is waywardnesses.

Words near waywardness in the dictionary

  1. wayvodes
  2. wayward
  3. waywarden
  4. waywardens
  5. waywardly
  6. waywardness
  7. waywardnesses
  8. waywise
  9. waywiser
  10. waywisers
  11. waywod

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: waywardness (page history and authors); waywardness (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); বেলেল্লাপনা (Bengali) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-waywardness.ogg.

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