Wannabe

How to spell wannabe

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce wannabe

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wannabe mean?

1. nounA person who tries to be like someone else or to achieve a status they have not earned, often unconvincingly.

Wannabe in a sentence

• The talent show was full of every pop-star wannabe in the county.

• He dismissed the new manager as a corporate wannabe with no real experience.

Where does wannabe come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a casual respelling of the spoken phrase 'want to be', which in rapid speech collapses into 'wanna be'. It surfaced in print as a single informal noun during the 1980s, especially in American entertainment journalism, where it described fans and imitators who tried to copy a famous person's style. The spelling deliberately mimics relaxed pronunciation, dropping the 't' of 'want to' and fusing the words, which is exactly why the ending looks odd on the page: it represents 'be' but is written without an 'e' before it in some careless attempts. The roots themselves are plainly Germanic English, since 'want' came into Middle English from the Old Norse 'vanta', meaning 'to lack' or 'be missing', while 'be' is one of the oldest native English verbs. The original sense of 'want' as 'to lack' fits the word neatly, because a wannabe lacks the very thing they aspire to.

How the word is built

• wanna (colloquial contraction of 'want to')
• be (verb)