See wantum in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
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"etymology_text": "Eye dialect for want 'em.",
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"ref": "1998, Arthur W. Upfield, The Bone is Pointed, →ISBN, page 82:",
"text": "Then he have wongie along Sargint in office feller. White blackfeller wantum know 'bout old Sarah, an' Sargint he tellum she goodoh.",
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"ref": "2003, Thomas Burke, More Limehouse Nights, →ISBN, page 126:",
"text": "Oh, ah — er — me wantum Chinkie just come in.",
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"ref": "2009, Richard M. Dixon, Choosing Sides, →ISBN, page 166:",
"text": "“You wantum eat? You wantum sleep? If you wantum eat you wakum up.”",
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"To want."
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"(imitating broken English) To want."
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"word": "wantum"
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"ref": "1993, Harold N. Boris, Passions of the Mind: Unheard Melodies, →ISBN:",
"text": "A projection of “Wantum” requires, in the Couple, a reciprocal agreement on the part of the other to allow more than his own portion of Wantum to be discovered in him or herself.",
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"ref": "2004, Anthony Uhlmann, Sjef Houppermans, Bruno Clément, After Beckett, →ISBN, page 249:",
"text": "To use Wylie's phraseology: the quantum of this particular discursive wantum cannot vary.",
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"ref": "2014, Gregory Benford, Gregory Benford SF Gateway Omnibus: Artifact, Cosm, Eater, →ISBN:",
"text": "The desire to find something could provoke what she called 'wantum mechanics,' fishing a result out of nothing but noise.",
"type": "quote"
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"glosses": [
"A quantifiable deficiency or desire"
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"id": "en-wantum-en-noun-YGYSH3Uc"
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"etymology_text": "Eye dialect for want 'em.",
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"text": "Then he have wongie along Sargint in office feller. White blackfeller wantum know 'bout old Sarah, an' Sargint he tellum she goodoh.",
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"text": "Oh, ah — er — me wantum Chinkie just come in.",
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"text": "“You wantum eat? You wantum sleep? If you wantum eat you wakum up.”",
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"To want."
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"(imitating broken English) To want."
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"text": "A projection of “Wantum” requires, in the Couple, a reciprocal agreement on the part of the other to allow more than his own portion of Wantum to be discovered in him or herself.",
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"ref": "2004, Anthony Uhlmann, Sjef Houppermans, Bruno Clément, After Beckett, →ISBN, page 249:",
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"ref": "2014, Gregory Benford, Gregory Benford SF Gateway Omnibus: Artifact, Cosm, Eater, →ISBN:",
"text": "The desire to find something could provoke what she called 'wantum mechanics,' fishing a result out of nothing but noise.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A quantifiable deficiency or desire"
]
}
],
"word": "wantum"
}
Download raw JSONL data for wantum meaning in English (3.3kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-04-13 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-04-03 using wiktextract (aeaf2a1 and fb63907). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.