Noun: want
Sample Sentences
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After a search which produced most of the things on our wants list, we went down to picnic on the shore in the sunshine-with a good stretch of shingle behind us over which no triffid could approach unheard. [1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 249:]
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She showed a want of caution in renting her house to complete strangers.
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[H]eavens and honour be witness, that no want of resolution in me, but only my followers' base and ignominious treasons, makes me betake me to my heels. [1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene viii]:]
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They are wet with the showres of the mountaines, and imbrace the rocke for want of a shelter. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Job 24:8:]
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want. [1713, Jonathan Swift, A Preface to Bishop Burnet's Introduction:]
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Habitual superfluities become actual wants. [1785, William Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy:]
Nouns inflected like want
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English wanten (“to lack, to need”), from Old Norse vanta (“to lack”), from Proto-Germanic *wanatōną (“to be wanting, lack”), from *wanô (“lack, deficiency”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- (“empty”). Cognate with Middle High German wan (“not full, empty”), Middle Dutch wan (“empty, poor”), Old English wana (“want, lack, absence, deficiency”), Latin vanus (“empty”). See wan, wan-. See: Old Norse Nouns '
vanta', Old English Nouns '
wana', Latin Nouns '
vanus'.
Verbs referencing "want"
Norwegian Bokmål Nouns
vånd.