want

verb wants · wanting · wanted · want

1. transitive To wish for or desire (something); to feel a need or desire for; to crave, hanker, or demand. I want you as a friend, not a foe.
2. broadly, transitive To make it easy or tempting to do something undesirable, or to make it hard or challenging to refrain from doing it. The game developers of Candy Crush want you to waste large, copious amounts of your money on in-game purchases to buy boosters and lives.
3. transitive, in particular To wish, desire, or demand to see, have the presence of or do business with. Ma’am, you are exactly the professional we want for this job.
4. intransitive To desire (to experience desire); to wish. You can leave if you want.
5. colloquial, interrogative, second person, usually To be advised to do or aim for something (compare should, ought). You’ll want to repeat this three or four times to get the best result.
6. colloquial, transitive To lack and be in need of or require (something, such as a noun or verbal noun). The lady, it is said, will inherit a fortune of three hundred pounds a year, with two cool thousands left by an uncle, on her arriving at the age of twenty-one, of which she wants but a few months.

   Similar: need, be in need of

7. archaic, transitive To have occasion for (something requisite or useful); to require or need. Man wants but little, nor that little long.
8. dated, intransitive To be lacking or deficient or absent. There was something wanting in the play.
9. dated, intransitive To be in a state of destitution; to be needy; to lack. You have a gift, sir (thank your education), / Will never let you want.
10. archaic, transitive To lack and be without, to not have (something). he that hath skill to be a pilot wants a ship; and he that could govern a commonwealth[…]wants means to exercise his worth, hath not a poor office to manage.

    Similar: lack, be without

11. broadly, obsolete, transitive To lack and perhaps be able or willing to do without. […] which the Kings of Assyria had left for the maintenance of this Temple sacrifices, after the ouerthrow thereof, was shared among the Chaldzans; which they by this attempt were like to lose, and therefore were willing to want his presence.
12. To desire a romantic or (especially) sexual relationship with someone; to lust for. Dang, girl! Your brother is gorgeous! I want him so bad!

Similar: set one's heart on, wish for, would like, ache, appetize, aspire, covet, crave, desire, dream, eye, fancy, fond, heart, hope, hunger, jones, like, thirst, wish · Opposite: dislike, hate, unwant

noun wants · waunt

1. countable A desire, wish, longing. 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.
2. countable Lack, absence, deficiency. She showed a want of caution in renting her house to complete strangers.
3. uncountable Poverty. Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.
4. countable, uncountable Something needed or desired; a thing of which the loss is felt. Habitual superfluities become actual wants.
5. UK, countable, uncountable A depression in coal strata, hollowed out before the subsequent deposition took place.

noun wants

1. dialectal A mole (Talpa europea). Lic. She hath the ears of a want. / Pec. Doth she want ears?

proper noun

1. A personification of want.