wild
/wʌɪld
/adjective
1(Of an animal or plant) living or growing in the natural environment; not domesticated or cultivated: a herd of wild goats wild strawberries...
- All the sunflowers that were planted last summer were brown, wild shrubs grew abundantly, and weeds consumed the few lilies that were trying desperately to live.
- Trees are cut down to grow cash crops and wild creatures are shot.
- Dragons eat any animals they can catch, up to the size of wild pigs, goats, deer, and water buffaloes and occasionally including human beings.
Synonyms
untamed, undomesticated, feral;
unbroken;
fierce, ferocious, savage
uncultivated, natural;
native, indigenous
technical agrestal
1.1Produced from wild animals or plants without cultivation: wild honey...
- The smell is of locusts and wild honey, like John the Baptist's menu.
- For £150 a year, anyone can adopt a sheep and in return be sent four kilos of pecorino, wild honey, jams and some woollen jumpers.
- There are some women's units making excellent bath soaps by adding exotic ingredients like honey, saffron, wild turmeric or sandal.
2(Of a place or region) uninhabited, uncultivated, or inhospitable: an expanse of wild moorland the wild coastline of Cape Wrath...
- I think that instilled a love for landscape, for wild places and open spaces.
- Clearly his is a cack-handed attempt to cash in on the growing public desire to take wild places into the ownership and control of the communities that live around them.
- I reckon my love of nature and of wild places started out with Romany.
Synonyms
uninhabited, unpopulated, uncultivated, unfarmed, unmanaged, virgin;
rugged, rough, inhospitable, desolate, empty, deserted, trackless, waste, barren
2.1(Of sea or the weather) rough and stormy: a wild, bitterly cold night...
- For me the wild seas and the cold were really tough.
- A few days back I thrilled to a display of wild weather, noting a ‘water spout’ descending from the clouds over Boston during a rain storm.
- There's something primal and deeply satisfying about sitting indoors, all warm and snug and listening to wild weather beating at the eaves.
Synonyms
stormy, squally, tempestuous, turbulent, blustery, windy, howling, raging, roaring, furious, violent;
angry, dirty, foul, nasty, inclement;
rough, storm-tossed, choppy, boiling
rare boisterous
2.2(Of people) not civilized; primitive: the wild tribes from the north...
- Egypt, Donnelly wrote, was their colony, where they tried to civilize wild tribes.
- But while the colonial powers cast the rebels in the light of wild savages destroying the civilising force of the settlers, it was Africans who suffered the brunt of attacks.
- Some wild tribes of the distant past no doubt did follow the practice of killing innocent people in revenge for the death of one of their men.
Synonyms
primitive, uncivilized, uncultured, uncultivated, uneducated, ignorant;
savage, barbarous, barbaric, brutish, ferocious, fierce;
Indian jungli
archaic rude
2.3(Of a look, appearance, etc.) indicating distraction or strong emotion: her wild eyes were darting back and forth...
- His struggles were becoming more and more frenzied, a wild look creeping into his blue eyes.
- Geniuses must have a wild look, their hair must be in disarray, their mind must be in torment on account of their receptivity to divine afflatus, which comes in via the hair.
- You could see the home fans get a wild look in their eye as naked drummers ran up and down the sidelines riding stick-horses and chanting in the rain.
3Lacking discipline or restraint: wild parties were never her scene...
- ‘They have a wild party but something goes wrong,’ says Welsh, refusing to divulge the secret at the heart of the plot.
- I still go to wild parties - only they're at Wacky Warehouse and the guest list is made up of screaming five-year-olds.
- Upon moving in, the duchess became famous for her wild parties.
Synonyms
uncontrolled, unrestrained, out of control, undisciplined, unconstrained, uncurbed, unbridled, unchecked, chaotic;
uninhibited, extrovert, attention-seeking, unconventional;
wayward, self-willed, ungovernable, unmanageable, unruly, rowdy, disorderly, riotous, lawless
rare corybantic
3.1 informal Very enthusiastic or excited: I’m not wild about the music...
- He's arrived in Boston to address the wild, enthusiastic, over-the-top Democratic Convention.
- Liz, on the other hand, has strong cultural and familial restrictions on staring, and tends to look very mildly upon people, when she looks at all, even when she's standing in front of a man she's wild about.
- Henry wants me to try this Vietnamese place he's wild about. Want to come?
Synonyms
very excited, jumping up and down, on fire, delirious, in a frenzy, frantic;
uproarious, tumultuous, passionate, vehement, eager, unrestrained, untrammelled
very keen on, very enthusiastic about, passionate about, enamoured of, infatuated with, smitten with
informal crazy about, mad about, nutty/nuts about, potty about, gone on
3.2 informal Very angry.She was wild. She just flipped. It was as if she had voices in her head.
Synonyms
furious, very angry, infuriated, incensed, enraged, beside oneself, irate, fuming, in a rage, raging, seething, maddened, exasperated
informal livid, mad, hopping mad, seeing red, hot under the collar, up in arms, foaming at the mouth, on the warpath, steamed up, fit to be tied
British informal spare
Scottish informal radge
4Not based on sound reasoning or probability: a wild guess wild rumours were circulating performing in Hollywood was beyond my wildest dreams...
- These figures are no more than wild guesses and not derived from research or sound information.
- But times are fresh and proof is mostly based on wild innuendo and moral snobbery in these dawn days of post-America.
- At least with Santa Claus, we know there really was a Saint Nicholas on whom all the later wild stories are based.
Synonyms
madcap, ridiculous, ludicrous, foolish, stupid, lunatic, foolhardy, idiotic, absurd, silly, asinine, unwise, ill-advised, ill-considered, ill-conceived, illogical, senseless, nonsensical;
impractical, impracticable, unpractical, unworkable, imprudent, reckless, preposterous, outrageous;
extravagant, fantastical, fantastic, fanciful
informal crazy, crackpot, crackbrained, cock-eyed
British informal daft
random, arbitrary, hit-or-miss, haphazard, uninformed
informal shot-in-the-dark
5(Of a playing card) deemed to have any value, suit, colour, or other property in a game at the discretion of the player holding it. See also wild card.In some games certain cards are wild - either the deuces or a joker added to the deck - and in some games there is a cumulative jackpot which is won by a high hand such as a royal flush....
- In this case each hand the wild tiles move around the board from player to player so each player gets 2 wild tiles every 3rd hand.
- A player uses the wild double in his turn to end the gameround.
noun (the wild)
1A natural state or uncultivated or uninhabited region: kiwis are virtually extinct in the wild...
- Zoos often keep their animals in cramped, often barren conditions: a far cry from the animal's natural habitat in the wild.
- Our data suggest that the performance paradigm can be expanded to reveal more of the physiological underpinning of natural selection in the wild.
- If so, does a fish have a worse time of it in a net than it will have when it is killed by a predator or dies of other natural causes in the wild?
1.1 (the wilds) A remote uninhabited or sparsely inhabited area: he spent a year in the wilds of Canada...
- It must have been a tough decision to be tucked away in the wilds of the remote village after a degree from Oxford but he obviously has a lot of the hardy Scot in him, as his occasional hints keep reminding us.
- It's well written with lots of excellent photographs and is packed full of knowledge gained from her many years working as a trout-fishing guide in the wilds of the Caithness area of Scotland.
- Francis came all the way back into the big bad city from the wilds of New Haven, so we were glad to see him.
Synonyms
remote areas, wilderness;
backwoods, hinterlands;
North American backcountry, backland;
Australian/New Zealand outback, bush, backblocks, booay;
South African backveld, platteland
North American informal boondocks, boonies, tall timbers
Australian/New Zealand informal Woop Woop, beyond the black stump
verb [with object] West Indian
Treat (a person or animal) harshly, so that they become untrusting or nervous: let your pigeon fly for a while: we don’t want to wild him
Phrases
run wild
wild horses wouldn't ——
wild and woolly
Derivatives
wildish
Origin
Old English wilde, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch and German wild.
Both wild and wilderness are Old English words. The first sense of wild was ‘not tame or domesticated’, and wilderness means literally ‘land inhabited only by wild animals’—it comes from Old English wild dēor ‘wild deer’. This is the sense in The Call of the Wild (1903), a novella by the American writer Jack London about a pet sold as a sled dog that returns to the wild to lead a pack of wolves. To the Anglo-Saxons wildfire was originally a raging, destructive fire caused by a lightning strike. It was also a mixture of highly flammable substances used in warfare, and a term for various skin diseases that spread quickly over the body. Use of spread like wildfire was suggested by Shakespeare's line in his poem The Rape of Lucrece: ‘Whose words like wild fire burnt the shining glorie / Of rich-built Illion [Troy]’. A wild goose chase does not come from hunting. Early examples, dating from the late 16th century, refer to a popular sport of the time in which each of a line of riders had to follow accurately the course of the leader, like a flight of wild geese. The wooded uplands know as wolds (Old English), as in Cotswolds, or wealds are probably from the same root. See also deer, voice, west, wool