WANT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Want

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/wɑnt/ /wɔnt/ Listen

verb

Want v. t. (past & past part. wanted; pres. part. wanting)

To be without; to be destitute of, or deficient in; not to have; to lack; as, to want knowledge; to want judgment; to want learning; to want food and clothing. "They that want honesty, want anything." "Nor think, though men were none, That heaven would want spectators, God want praise." "The unhappy never want enemies."

To have occasion for, as useful, proper, or requisite; to require; to need; as, in winter we want a fire; in summer we want cooling breezes.

To feel need of; to wish or long for; to desire; to crave. " What wants my son?" "I want to speak to you about something."

Want v. i.

To be absent; to be deficient or lacking; to fail; not to be sufficient; to fall or come short; to lack; often used impersonally with of; as, it wants ten minutes of four. "The disposition, the manners, and the thoughts are all before it; where any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in the imitation of human life."

To be in a state of destitution; to be needy; to lack. "You have a gift, sir (thank your education), Will never let you want." "For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind." Note: Want was formerly used impersonally with an indirect object. "Him wanted audience."

noun

Want n.

The state of not having; the condition of being without anything; absence or scarcity of what is needed or desired; deficiency; lack; as, a want of power or knowledge for any purpose; want of food and clothing. "And me, his parent, would full soon devour For want of other prey." "From having wishes in consequence of our wants, we often feel wants in consequence of our wishes." "Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and more saucy."

Specifically, absence or lack of necessaries; destitution; poverty; penury; indigence; need. "Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want."

That which is needed or desired; a thing of which the loss is felt; what is not possessed, and is necessary for use or pleasure. "Habitual superfluities become actual wants."

(Mining) A depression in coal strata, hollowed out before the subsequent deposition took place. (Eng.)

Synonyms: Indigence; deficiency; defect; destitution; lack; failure; dearth; scarceness.

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Etymology of 'Want'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Want" Quotes from Famous Books

... the Silver Pit—an' there we'll let 'em lie; Cod on the Dogger—oh, we'll fetch 'em by an' by; War on the water—an' it's time to serve an' die, For there's wild work doin' on the North Sea ground. An' it's "Wake up, Johnnie!" they want you at the trawlin' (With your long sea-boots and your tarry old tarpaulin); All across the bitter seas duty comes a-callin' In the Winter's weather off the North Sea ground. It's well we've learned to laugh at fear—the sea has taught us how; It's well we've shaken hands with death—we'll ...

— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... weathercock registering the drift of all his petty hopes and fears. I see the left ear go forward and prepare for a desperate shy at that wheelbarrow. He knows a wheelbarrow familiarly—there is one in his stall all day—but I am taking him a road he does not want to go, and so the hypocrite is going to pretend that barrow is of a dangerous sort. I prepare to apply a counter-irritant: he sees it with the corner of his eye, and both ears turn ...

— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... finished, the queen was so delighted that she ran with it in her lap to the king, who ordered it to be put in a cistern full of water, with me in it, by way of trial; where I could not manage my two sculls,[68] or little oars, for want of room. ...

— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... on Socialism, let go with a warning, on suspended sentence—canceled only by death—making his mark upon the walls of every well-furnished house in England or America; Jean Francois Millet, starved out in art-loving Paris, his pictures refused at the Salon, living next door to abject want in Barbizon, dubbed the "wild man of the woods," dead and turned to dust, his pictures commanding such sums as Paris never before paid; Walt Whitman, issuing his book at his own expense, publishers ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... talking about freedom, I didn't know what freedom was. I was there standin' right up and looking at 'em when they told us we was free. And master said, 'You all free now. You can go where you want to.' ...

— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

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