Other forms: wilder, wilds, wildest
Wild means living or growing free in nature, not kept or planted by people. Wild animals, wild flowers, the wild coast of the north.
From that come the senses about behaviour: a wild party, a wild guess, wild with anger. In each the idea is that nothing is controlling it. The noun is the wild — released back into the wild — and the wilds means remote country. Note wildlife, one word, and wilderness, which is the noun for the place. Two useful phrases: run wild, said of children and gardens alike, and wild about, meaning enthusiastic, which survives mostly in the negative — I am not wild about it.
1adjectivewildLiving or growing freely in nature.
“There are wild ponies on the moor.”
synonyms: untamed, feral
2adjectiveuncontrolledUncontrolled or very excited.
“The crowd went wild at the final whistle.”
3adjectiveinformationMade with no information behind it.
“It was a wild guess and it was right.”
4nounnaturalNatural areas away from people.
“The birds were released back into the wild.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
wild is a state of being untamed.
Old English wilde has cousins across the Germanic languages and no certain ancestor beyond them. It has always meant untamed, and the noun wilderness is wild plus deor, an animal — literally the place of wild beasts.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂welh₁- — hair; wool
Proto-Germanic
*wilþijaz — wild
Proto-West Germanic
*wilþī
Old English
wilde
Middle English
weilde
English, today
wild
From Middle English weilde, wield, wielde, wijlde, wild, wilde, wyld, wylde, wyled, wyyld, from Old English wilde, from Proto-West Germanic wilþī, from Proto-Germanic wilþijaz (“wild”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂welh₁- (“hair; wool”). 2 Cognate with frr wil (“wild”), stq wíeld, wüüld (“wild”), West Frisian wyld (“wild”), bar wüd (“wild”), gmw-cfr weld (“wild”), cim bill (“crazy, mad; wild; stupid”), Dutch, German and Low German wild (“wild”), lb wëll (“wild; savage”), wym wyłd (“wild”), Yiddish ווילד (“wild; savage”), Danish and Swedish vild (“wild”), Faroese villur (“wild”), Icelandic villtur (“wild; lost; barbaric, savage; uncultivated; untamed”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk vill (“wild”), vill (“lost”), Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐌻𐌸𐌴𐌹𐍃 (“wild”); also kw gwlan (“wool”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic olann (“wool”), gv ollan (“wool”), Welsh gwlân (“wool”), Latin vellus (“fleece, wool”), villus (“hair, shaggy hair”), Ancient Greek λάχνη (“woolly hair; thin hair; soft nap or pile on cloth; quills hedgehog; leafage”), Lithuanian valai (“hair of the horse tail”), be во́лас (“single hair”), Czech and Slovak vlas (“single hair”), mk влас (“fluff; thread (of hair)”), Polish włos (“single hair”), Russian and Ukrainian во́лос (“single hair”), Serbo-Croatian вла̑с, vlȃs (“single hair”), Slovene las (“hair on top of head; nap, pile”), Armenian գեղմ (“fleece, wool”), ckb پرچ (“fax, headhair”), kmr hirî (“wool”), Persian گرس (“curl, ringlet; braid”), hit 𒋠𒀸 (“wool”), xto urṇ (“the circles of white hair between the brows of the Buddha or other deity”), txb ūrṇ (“the circles of white hair between the brows of the Buddha or other deity”), Sanskrit वल्श (“branch, shoot, twig”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA