Other forms: wanted, wants, wanting
To want something is to wish you had it. A cold drink, a day off, a house with a bit of garden — want is the plain everyday verb for all of it.
Its grammar traps learners twice. It takes to plus a verb: I want to go, never I want go. And when somebody else is doing the thing, you say I want you to come, never I want that you come. It does not go in the continuous either — I want a coffee, not I am wanting a coffee. Behind the modern sense sits an older one meaning to lack, still alive in for want of a better word, in the house wants painting, and in the noun: they grew up in want. Then there is the police sense you meet everywhere — wanted for questioning, a wanted man.
1verbwantTo wish to have or do something.~94%
“She wants a bicycle for her birthday.”
2verbneedTo need something done or given.~2%
“That fence wants a coat of paint before winter.”
3verblookingTo be looking for someone in order to arrest or speak to them.~2%
“He was wanted for questioning in two counties.”
4nounlackA lack of something, or the state of having too little.~2%
“The plants died for want of water.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Want did not start as wishing, it started as lacking. English took it from Old Norse vanta, to lack, from Proto-Germanic *wanatōną and a Proto-Indo-European root meaning empty — the same idea behind Latin vanus, empty, and English wan. What you want is what is missing; the wishing came afterwards.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁weh₂- — empty
Proto-Germanic
*wanatōną — to be wanting, lack
Old Norse
vanta — to lack
Middle English
wanten — to lack, to need
English, today
want
Built from
From Middle English wanten (“to lack, to need”), from Old Norse vanta (“to lack”), from Proto-Germanic wanatōną (“to be wanting, lack”), from wanô (“lack, deficiency”), from Proto-Indo-European h₁weh₂- (“empty”). Cognate with Middle High German wan (“not full, empty”), Middle Dutch wan (“empty, poor”), Old English wana (“want, lack, absence, deficiency”), Latin vanus (“empty”). See wan, wan-.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA