Wildlife

How to spell wildlife

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wildlife

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wildlife mean?

1. nounWild animals, birds, and other organisms living in their natural environment.

Wildlife in a sentence

• The new motorway threatens local wildlife along the river.

• The documentary captured wildlife in the remote rainforest.

Where does wildlife come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wildlife is a transparent English compound made from two native Old English words, 'wild' and 'life'. The word 'wild' descends from Old English 'wilde', meaning 'in a natural state, not tamed or cultivated', and 'life' comes from Old English 'lif', meaning the condition of a living being. The two were joined into a single noun comparatively recently, with the combined form 'wild life' appearing in the nineteenth century and the solid spelling 'wildlife' becoming standard in the early twentieth century as conservation and natural history grew popular. Its meaning narrowed from 'undomesticated life in general' to specifically the wild animals, birds, and sometimes plants of a region. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the only real spelling decision is whether to write it as one word, which is now the accepted form.

How the word is built

• wild (untamed, not domesticated)
• life (living creatures)