witwanton
witwanton noun: one who indulges in idle, foolish, and irreverent fancies or speculations; one who tries to be cleverly amusing but falls short.
Noun
witwanton (plural witwantons)
- One who indulges in idle, foolish, and irreverent fancies or speculations; one who tries to be cleverly amusing but falls short.
- All epicures, witwantons, atheists.1613, Josuah Sylvester, Lachrymae Lachrymarum
- And how dangerous it is for wit-wanton men to dance with their nice distinctions, on such mystical precipices, where slips in jest may cause deadly downfalls in earnest, …1655, Thomas Fuller, “4, A.D. 1611--1619”, in The Church History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the Year MDCXLVIII, Book 10
Verb
witwanton (third-person singular simple present witwantons, present participle witwantoning, simple past and past participle witwantoned)
- To indulge in vain, sportive, or irreverent wit; speculate idly or irreverently.
- … a citizen in Cheapside was executed as a traitor for saying he would make his son heir to the crown, though he only meant his own house, having a crown for the sign, more dangerous it is to wit-wanton it with the Majesty of God.1834, William Chambers, Robert Chambers, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Digitized edition, W. Orr, published 2007, page 32
- Wit-wanton it with lewd barbarity, …1839, Rober Southey, The poetical works of Robert Southey, Digitized edition, D. Appleton, published 2008, page 88
Examples of witwanton in a sentence
- The witwanton is always a little off in trying to be always GETTING MENTAL.1986, David Grambs, Dimboxes, epopts, and other quidams:
- WITWANTON: One who tries to be cleverly amusing, but misses the mark.2003, Robert M. Jarvis, Amicus Humoriae: An Anthology of Legal Humor, Carolina Academic Press, →ISBN, page 97:
- And Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry.1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2008:
- Nor I will not suffer mine indignation so to witwanton with fair justice as persuade me to put the wite on Witchland.1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, chapter 209, in The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC:
Forms of witwanton
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | witwantons |
| alternative form | wit-wanton |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | witwantons |
| present participle | witwantoning |
| past participle | witwantoned |
| past | witwantoned |
Origin of witwanton
From wit + wanton.
Questions about witwanton
- What does witwanton mean?
- Witwanton means one who indulges in idle, foolish, and irreverent fancies or speculations; one who tries to be cleverly amusing but falls short.
- How do you use witwanton in a sentence?
- The witwanton is always a little off in trying to be always GETTING MENTAL.
- What part of speech is witwanton?
- Witwanton can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of witwanton?
- The plural of witwanton is witwantons.
Words near witwanton in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: witwanton (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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Cite this entry: “witwanton.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/witwanton. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.