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wanting

verb

Form of want , present participle of want.

Simple meaning

To wish for or desire.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

wahnting

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈwɑntɪŋ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

verb

  1. present participle of want

    To wish for or desire (something); to feel a need or desire for; to crave, hanker, or demand.

  2. present participle of wanttransitivein particular

    To wish, desire, or demand to see, have the presence of or do business with.

  3. present participle of want

    To desire (to experience desire); to wish.

  4. present participle of want

    Feel or have a desire for; want strongly

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

This meaning: To wish for or desire (something); to feel a need or desire for; to crave, hanker, or demand.

Used this way, wanting is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

entirely wanting

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • wantverbBase word

    Feel or have a desire for.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.