Word.ws English Dictionary

wild

/ˈwaɪ̯ld/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

General South African/ˈwaːld/

wild adjective: especially, being of the wild type: being of an unbroken ancestral line of undomesticated animals, as opposed to being feral, being an undomesticated animal whose ancestors were domesticated. Also the alternative form of weald.

Adjective

wild (comparative wilder, superlative wildest)

  1. Especially, being of the wild type: being of an unbroken ancestral line of undomesticated animals, as opposed to being feral, being an undomesticated animal whose ancestors were domesticated.
    • Near-synonym: indigenous
    • Przewalski's horses are the only remaining wild horses, although there are many feral horses throughout the world.
    Antonyms:
    tame
  2. Being in the wild, by any pathway (whether by being of the wild type, by being feral since birth, or by being feral after escape from domesticated life).
    Synonyms:
    feral, indomite, tameless
    Antonyms:
    tame
  3. From or relating to wild creatures.
    • wild honey
  4. Unrestrained or uninhibited.
    • I was filled with wild rage when I discovered the infidelity, and punched a hole in the wall.
    • Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
      ⁠Confusions of a wasted youth;
      ⁠Forgive them where they fail in truth,
      And in thy wisdom make me wise.1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Prologue”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC
  5. Raucous, unruly, or licentious.
    • The fraternity was infamous for its wild parties, which frequently resulted in police involvement.
    • Those most rural routes will not get overhead wires. As Reeve told the seminar: "Even in my wildest dreams, I can't see a business case for electrifying the Far North Line."2022 August 10, Philip Haigh, “Scotland switched on to electrification”, in RAIL, number 963, page 35
  6. Of unregulated and varying frequency.
    • The aircraft's navigational equipment should not be powered from the wild AC bus except in an emergency, as its computers can be damaged by variations in electrical frequency.
  7. Visibly and overtly anxious; frantic.
    • Her mother was wild with fear when she didn't return home after the party.
    • City, in contrast, were lethargic in every area of the pitch and their main contribution in the first half-hour was to keep referee Phil Dowd busy, with Micah Richards among four of their players booked early on, in his case for a wild lunge on Young.2011 August 7, Chris Bevan, “Man City 2-3 Man Utd”, in BBC Sport
  8. Furious; very angry.
  9. Disheveled, tangled, or untidy.
    • After a week on the trail without a mirror, my hair was wild and dirty.
  10. Enthusiastic.
    • I'm not wild about the idea of a two day car trip with my nephews, but it's my only option.
  11. Very inaccurate; far off the mark.
    • The novice archer fired a wild shot and hit her opponent's target.
  12. Exposed to the wind and sea; unsheltered.
    • a wild roadstead
Show 6 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. Hard to steer.
  2. Not capable of being represented as a finite closed polygonal chain.
    Antonyms:
    tame
  3. (slang) Amazing, awesome, unbelievable.
    • Did you hear? Pat won the lottery! — Wow, that's wild!
  4. (slang) Very unexpected; wildly surprising; crazy, diabolical.
  5. Able to stand in for others, e.g. a card in games, or a text character in computer pattern matching.
    • In this card game, aces are wild: they can take the place of any other card.
    • We define a pattern as a valid GP subtree that might contain wild characters [i.e. wildcards] in any of its nodes.2009, Leonardo Vanneschi, Steven Gustafson, Alberto Moraglio, Genetic Programming: 12th European Conference
  6. Of an audio recording: intended to be synchronized with film or video but recorded separately.
    • a wild track; wild sound

Adverb

wild (not comparable)

  1. Inaccurately; not on target.
    • The javelin flew wild and struck a spectator, to the horror of all observing.
  2. Intended to be synchronized with film or video but recorded separately.
    • Let's record it wild.

Noun

wild (plural wilds)

  1. (singular, with-definite-article) The undomesticated state of a wild animal.
    • After mending the lion's leg, we returned him to the wild.
  2. (in plural) A wilderness.
    • Thus every good his native wilds impart
      Imprints the patriot passion on his heart;
      And e’en those ills that round his mansion rise
      Enhance the bliss his scanty funds supplies.1730–1774, Oliver Goldsmith, Introductory to Switzerland
  3. Something that is able to stand in for others, such as a particular playing card in a game.

Verb

wild (third-person singular simple present wilds, present participle wilding, simple past and past participle wilded)

  1. (intransitive, slang) To commit random acts of assault, robbery, and rape in an urban setting, especially as a gang.
    • ...Chief of Detectives Robert Colangelo, who said the attacks appeared unrelated to money, race, drugs, or alcohol, said that some of the 20 youths brought in for questioning has told investigators that the crime spree was the product of a pastime called "wilding".
      "It's not a term that we in the...1989 April 22, David E. Pitt, “Jogger's Attackers Terrorized at Least 9 in 2 Hours”, in New York Times, page 1
    • Now is they wildin with us / And getting rowdy with us.1999, Busta Rhymes (Trevor Taheim Smith, Jr.), Iz They Wildin Wit Us? (song)
  2. (intransitive, slang) (In the form wilding or wildin') To act in a strange or unexpected way.
    • They had a big influence on me. They had a big influence on Brooklyn period. I like the nonsense. [laughs] They were wildin'. Everyone in Brooklyn was liking that shit. They're wildin'. Their story in the stu, it gets deep.2021 April 6, Shirley Ju, “The New Voice of Brooklyn is Here To 'Drench 'Em'”, in Flaunt Magazine, archived from the original on 07 Sep 2022
    • Kinsey posted a clip of the incident alongside a caption that reads: "Damn the ER in Tulsa be wildin'."2021 October 14, Jack Beresford, “Hospital Security Guard 'Heartbroken' After Being Fired Over Viral Video Confrontation”, in Newsweek

Proper noun capitalized: Wild

Wild

  1. A surname from Middle English originally referring to a wild person, or for someone living in uncultivated land.

Also used as

wild is also the alternative form of weald.

wild meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Telugu and Malayalam

wild in Hindi

not domesticated or tamed
जंगली jaṅglī

wild in Urdu

not domesticated or tamed
جنگلی jangli

wild in Telugu

not domesticated or tamed
పిచ్చి picci

wild in Malayalam

not domesticated or tamed
വന്യ vanya, കാട്ട് kāṭṭŭ
More languagesFewer languages
wild in Assamese
বনৰীয়া bonoria, জংঘলী zoṅgholi, বনজ bonoz, বৰ্বৰ borror
wild in Tagalog
mailap, ligaw, maliyap
wild in Arabic
مُتَوَحِّش mutawaḥḥiš, بَرِّيّ barriyy
wild in Malay
liar
wild in Persian
دد dad, وحشی vahši
wild in Thai
ป่า bpàa, เถื่อน tʉ̀ʉan
wild in Vietnamese
hoang dã

Examples of wild in a sentence

  • In this region, the wild boars can be dangerous, but (perhaps counterintuitively) the feral hogs can be even worse.
  • Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First...
  • Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and deſert caves, / With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown,1637 (date written; published 1638), John Milton, “Lycidas”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, […], London: […] Ruth Raworth for Humphrey...
  • Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, and individual plants are highly heterozygous and do not breed true.2013 May–June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3:
  • The Ringer's Culture/NBA writer Wosney Lambre said it best: "I think it's a bad look for the players to be wilding on the fans like this.2022 April 20, A. Sherrod Blakely, “The Neverending Disappointment of Kyrie Irving”, in Bleacher Report:

All 40 example sentences with wild

Synonyms of wild

9 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of wild

Forms of wild

Adjective
comparativewilder
superlativewildest
alternative form (obsolete)wilde
alternative form (obsolete)wyld
Noun
pluralwilds
Verb
third-person singular presentwilds
present participlewilding
past participlewilded
pastwilded

Plural of wild: wilds

Origin of wild

From Middle English weilde, wield, wielde, wijlde, wild, wilde, wyld, wylde, wyled, wyyld, from Old English wilde, from Proto-West Germanic *wilþī, from Proto-Germanic *wilþijaz (“wild”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂welh₁- (“hair; wool”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian wil (“wild”), Saterland Frisian wíeld, wüüld (“wild”), West Frisian wyld (“wild”), Bavarian wüd (“wild”), Central Franconian weld (“wild”), Cimbrian bill (“crazy, mad; wild; stupid”), Dutch, German, and Low German wild (“wild”), Luxembourgish wëll (“wild; savage”), Vilamovian wyłd (“wild”), Yiddish ווילד (vild, “wild; savage”), Danish and Swedish vild (“wild”), Faroese villur (“wild”), Icelandic villtur (“wild; lost; barbaric, savage; uncultivated; untamed”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk vill (“wild”), vill (“lost”), Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐌻𐌸𐌴𐌹𐍃 (wilþeis, “wild”); also Cornish gwlan (“wool”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic olann (“wool”), Manx ollan (“wool”), Welsh gwlân (“wool”), Latin vellus (“fleece, wool”), villus (“hair, shaggy hair”), Ancient Greek λάχνη (lákhnē, “woolly hair; thin hair; soft nap or pile on cloth; quills hedgehog; leafage”), Lithuanian valai (“hair of the horse tail”), Belarusian во́лас (vólas...

Words formed from wild

Phrases with wild

161 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with wild

Questions about wild

What does wild mean?
Wild means especially, being of the wild type: being of an unbroken ancestral line of undomesticated animals, as opposed to being feral, being an undomesticated animal whose ancestors were domesticated.
What is wild in Hindi?
Wild in Hindi is जंगली (jaṅglī). See Wild meaning in Hindi.
How do you use wild in a sentence?
In this region, the wild boars can be dangerous, but (perhaps counterintuitively) the feral hogs can be even worse.
What part of speech is wild?
Wild can be an adjective, an adverb, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce wild?
Wild is pronounced /ˈwaɪ̯ld/.

Words near wild in the dictionary

  1. Wilczeks
  2. Wilczewski
  3. Wilczewskis
  4. Wilczynski
  5. Wilczynskis
  6. wild
  7. wild almond
  8. wild almonds
  9. wild and woolly
  10. wild and wooly
  11. wild animal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wild (page history and authors); Wild (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-wild.ogg.

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