Other forms: willing, wills
Will is how English talks about the future. I will call you, it will rain, the shop will be shut by then. It is one of the commonest words in the language and almost all of that frequency is this one job — which is why you meet it in the first weeks and go on using it every day after.
The same word carries wanting. Your will is what you want: against her will means she was forced, free will is the power to choose, and strength of will is what keeps you going when it stops being fun. From wanting comes the legal document — a will says what you want done with your things after you die — and the verb to will, which is wanting something hard enough to push it along, as a crowd wills a ball into the net. Where there's a will there's a way plays on both halves at once.
1verbverbUsed before another verb to talk about something in the future.~76%
“I will call you as soon as the train gets in.”
2verbofferUsed to offer, to ask, to promise, or — with not — to refuse.~2%
“Will you help me with this? I promise I will, and the door just won't open.”
3nounwishWhat somebody wants to happen.~5%
“He was taken to hospital against his will.”
4noundeterminationThe power to decide what you do and to keep doing it when it is hard.~2%
“It took real strength of will to get up at five every morning.”
5nounwillA legal document saying who is to receive your property after your death.~10%
“She left the cottage to her nephew in her will.”
6verbtryTo try to make something happen by wanting it very strongly.~5%
“The whole crowd was willing the ball into the net.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Proto-Indo-European
*welh₁- — to choose, wish
Proto-Germanic
*wiljaną
Proto-West Germanic
*willjan
Old English
willan — to want
Middle English
willen
English, today
will
From Middle English willen, wullen, wollen, from Old English willan (“to want”), from Proto-West Germanic willjan, from Proto-Germanic wiljaną, from Proto-Indo-European welh₁- (“to choose, wish”). 2 Cognate with yol ill, weel, well, will, woul, wull (“will”), frr wale, wel (“to want”), stq and West Frisian wolle (“to want”), gsw and gmw-cfr welle (“to want”), cim béllan, bölln (“to want”), Dutch willen (“to want”), German wollen (“to want”), Low German wüllen (“to want; will”), lb wëllen (“to want”), Yiddish וועלן (“to want”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål ville (“to want”), Faroese, Icelandic and Swedish vilja (“to want”), gmq-jmk vili (“to want; wish”), Norwegian Nynorsk vilja, vilje (“want; will”), Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐌻𐌾𐌰𐌽 (“to want”); also Latin velle (“wish”), voleō, volo (“to please, to wish; to want”), French vouloir (“to want”), Italian volere (“to want”), Irish fleá, fleadh (“feast”), Scottish Gaelic fleadh (“feast”), Welsh gwledd (“banquet, feast”), Lithuanian viltis (“to hope; to rely; to expect”), Czech velet (“to command”), volit (“to choose; to elect”), Polish woleć (“to prefer”), Russian во́ля (“freedom”), во́льный (“free”), веле́ть (“to command, to enjoin, to order”), Ukrainian воля (“freedom, liberty, will”), вільний (“free”), веліти (“to will, to order, to command”), воліти (“to will, to prefer”), xcl գեղձ (“desire, wish”), Sanskrit वृणीते, वृणोति (“to choose”). The verb is not always distinguishable from Etymology 3, below.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA