Wanting

How to spell wanting

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wanting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wanting mean?

1. verbPresent participle of want: wishing for or desiring something.
2. adjectiveLacking, deficient, or not coming up to the required standard.

Wanting in a sentence

• verb

  Wanting more storage, the couple chose the house with the larger garage.

• adjective

  The safety inspection found the wiring wanting in several respects.

• verb

  Wanting to leave before the traffic built up, she packed the car early.

• adjective

  His written report was wanting in detail and had to be revised.

Where does wanting come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word grows directly out of the verb 'want', which English took from the Old Norse vanta, meaning 'to lack' or 'to be missing'. That older sense of absence, rather than desire, is the original idea: to want something was first to be without it. The form vanta itself traces back to a root meaning 'empty' or 'deficient', the same family that gives us 'vain' in the sense of empty or fruitless. The participle 'wanting' carried both threads forward into modern English: one branch describes the act of desiring, the other survives in fixed phrases like 'found wanting', meaning shown to be deficient. Because the spelling simply adds the regular -ing ending to a familiar word, the only thing to watch is the single t, since the consonant is not doubled.

How the word is built

• want (from Old Norse vanta: to lack, be missing)
• -ing (participle/adjective suffix)