wild – English adjective declension

Adjective: wild

Comparison Forms

Synthetic

Comparative	wilder
Superlative	wildest

Perifrastic

Sample Sentences

Near-synonym: indigenous
Przewalski's horses are the only remaining wild horses, although there are many feral horses throughout the world.
In this region, the wild boars can be dangerous, but (perhaps counterintuitively) the feral hogs can be even worse.
noli me tangere for Ceſars I ame
and wylde for to hold though I ſeme tame [c. 1527–1542, Thomas Wyatt, “Who so list to hounte”, in Egerton MS 2711, page 7v:]
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 Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iv]:]
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 Mosely, […], published 1646, →OCLC, page 58:]
Their flowers range from the rather formal blossoming of outer London to the wilder flowering of the country, where willow-herb and broom, traveller's joy and campion, go rioting over the chalky banks of the Metropolitan Line. [1950 July, “Traveller's Joy”, in Railway Magazine, page ii (advertisement):]
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. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better. [2013 May–June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3:]
wild honey
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:]
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:]
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.
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:]
After a week on the trail without a mirror, my hair was wild and dirty.
I'm not wild about the idea of a two day car trip with my nephews, but it's my only option.
The novice archer fired a wild shot and hit her opponent's target.
a wild roadstead
Did you hear? Pat won the lottery! — Wow, that's wild!
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:]
a wild track; wild sound

Adjectives inflected like wild

sallow, smooth, slight, sleigh, sordid, somber, shweet, shrill, shrewd, yellow, yaller, hard knock, DRY, Greek, cut short, unquiet, unclean, indiscreet, chipper, straicht, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)

Etymology

1. 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”).
2. Cognates
3. 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, “single hair”), Czech and Slovak vlas (“single hair”), Macedonian влас (vlas, “fluff; thread (of hair)”), Polish włos (“single hair”), Russian and Ukrainian во́лос (vólos, “single hair”), Serbo-Croatian вла̑с, vlȃs (“single hair”), Slovene las (“hair on top of head; nap, pile”), Armenian գեղմ (geġm, “fleece, wool”), Central Kurdish پرچ (pirç, “fax, headhair”), Northern Kurdish hirî (“wool”), Persian گرس (gors, “curl, ringlet; braid”), Hittite 𒋠𒀸 (SÍG-aš, “wool”), Tocharian A urṇ (“the circles of white hair between the brows of the Buddha or other deity”), Tocharian B *ūrṇ (“the circles of white hair between the brows of the Buddha or other deity”), Sanskrit वल्श (valśa, “branch, shoot, twig”). See: Gothic Adjectives '𐍅𐌹𐌻𐌸𐌴𐌹𐍃'.