Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Occurring, growing, or living in a natural state; not domesticated, cultivated, or tamed.
  • adjective Not inhabited or farmed.
  • adjective Uncivilized or barbarous.
  • adjective Lacking supervision or restraint.
  • adjective Disorderly; unruly.
  • adjective Characterized by a lack of moral restraint; dissolute or licentious.
  • adjective Lacking regular order or arrangement; disarranged.
  • adjective Full of, marked by, or suggestive of strong, uncontrolled emotion.
  • adjective Extravagant; fantastic.
  • adjective Furiously disturbed or turbulent; stormy.
  • adjective Risky; imprudent.
  • adjective Impatiently eager.
  • adjective Informal Highly enthusiastic.
  • adjective Based on little or no evidence or probability; unfounded.
  • adjective Deviating greatly from an intended course; erratic.
  • adjective Games Having an equivalence or value determined by the cardholder's choice.
  • adverb In a wild manner.
  • noun A natural or undomesticated state.
  • noun A region that is mostly uninhabited or uncultivated.
  • intransitive verb To go about in a group threatening, robbing, or attacking others.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Being in a state of ebullition. Thus steel, solidifying in a mold, which is evolving gases, is said to be wild.
  • Self-willed; wayward; wanton; impatient of restraint or control; stirring; lively; boisterous; full of life and spirits; hence, frolicsome; giddy; light-hearted.
  • Boisterous: tempestuous; stormy; violent; turbulent; furious; uncontrolled: used in both a physical and a moral sense.
  • Bold; brave; daring; wight.
  • Loose and disorderly in conduct; given to going beyond bounds in pleasurable indulgence; ungoverned; more or less dissolute, wayward, or unrestrained in conduct; prodigal.
  • Reckless; rash; ill-considered; extravagant; out of accord with reason or prudence; haphazard: as, a wild venture; wild trading.
  • Extravagant; fantastic; irregular; disordered; weird; queer.
  • Enthusiastic; eager; keen; especially, very eager with delight, excitement, or the like.
  • Excited; roused; distracted; crazy; betokening or indicating excitement or strong emotion.
  • Wide of the mark or direct line, standard, or bounds.
  • Living in a state of nature; inhabiting the forest or open field; roving: wandering; not tame; not domesticated; feral or ferine: as, a wild boar; a wild ox; a wild cat; a wild bee.
  • Noting beasts of the chase, game-birds, and the like, which are noticeably shy, wary, or hard to take under certain circumstances: opposed to tame, 1 : as, the birds are wild this morning.
  • Savage; uncivilized; ungoverned; unrefined; ferocious; sanguinary: noting persons or practices.
  • Growing or produced without culture; produced by unassisted nature, or by wild animals; native; not cultivated: as, wild parsnip; wild cherry; wild honey.
  • Desert; not inhabited; uncultivated.
  • To escape from domestication and revert to the feral state.
  • To escape from cultivation and grow in a wild state.
  • See Ipomæa.
  • A locomotive which by some accident or derangement has escaped from the control of its driver.
  • A seesaw.
  • The West Indian euphorbiaeeous tree Drypetes glauca.
  • Gærtnera vaginata, of Réunion, without ground reported as a fit substitute for coffee: often misnamed mussænda.
  • In the West Indies, a plant of the genus Tillandsia, especially T. utriculata.
  • Synonyms and Rude, impetuous, irregular, unrestrained, harebrained, frantic, frenzied, crazed, fanciful, visionary, strange, grotesque.
  • noun A desert; an uninhabited and uncultivated tract or region; a waste.
  • noun plural Wild animals; game.
  • noun An obsolete variant of Weald, perhaps due to confusion with wild.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Living in a state of nature; inhabiting natural haunts, as the forest or open field; not familiar with, or not easily approached by, man; not tamed or domesticated.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English wilde, from Old English.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English wilde, from Proto-Germanic *wilþijaz.

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Examples

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  • Courtesy of Jay Griffiths.

    June 14, 2007