Wilder

How to spell wilder

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wilder

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wilder mean?

1. adjectiveMore wild; more untamed, uncontrolled, or unrestrained than something else.

Wilder in a sentence

• The second half of the trail is much wilder than the gentle opening miles.

• The coastline grows wilder and more rugged as you drive north.

Where does wilder come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word wild comes from the Old English wilde, an adjective meaning 'in the natural state, untamed, uncultivated, or uncontrolled'. It belongs to the wider Germanic family, with close cousins in the Dutch wild and the German wild, all carrying the same idea of something not brought under human control. The comparative form wilder is built in the ordinary native way, by adding the suffix -er to signal 'more' of a quality, a pattern English inherited from its Germanic roots. There is also an older, now largely literary verb to wilder, meaning 'to lead astray' or 'to cause to lose one's way', which is the same element that survives inside the everyday verb bewilder. Because the word is short and regular, the only real trap is remembering the single l and the -er ending rather than slipping toward an unrelated spelling.

How the word is built

• wild (untamed)
• -er (comparative suffix)