"wild man" meaning in English

See wild man in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: wild men [plural]
Etymology: From Middle English wilde man, equivalent to wild + man. Etymology templates: {{inh|en|enm|wilde man}} Middle English wilde man, {{af|en|wild|man}} wild + man Head templates: {{en-noun|wild men}} wild man (plural wild men)
  1. A primitive man who dwells outside of civilized society; a savage person without culture. Categories (topical): People Synonyms (person exhibiting unorthodox views or eccentric behavior): kook Synonyms (primitive person outside of civilization): woodwose
    Sense id: en-wild_man-en-noun--Jhk~Xzh Disambiguation of People: 48 37 15 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 63 9 28 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 68 12 20 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 65 12 22 Disambiguation of 'person exhibiting unorthodox views or eccentric behavior': 55 9 36 Disambiguation of 'primitive person outside of civilization': 91 3 7
  2. A rowdy, dissolute, rash, or violent man. Synonyms (violent, dissolute, rash, or rowdy person): miscreant, rascal, roughneck, ruffian
    Sense id: en-wild_man-en-noun-mXOLZgDc Disambiguation of 'violent, dissolute, rash, or rowdy person': 19 75 6
  3. A man who advocates unorthodox or outrageous opinions or who behaves in an eccentric manner.
    Sense id: en-wild_man-en-noun-Ox67IeAe
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: oddball, weirdo, strange person, wildman

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for wild man meaning in English (4.9kB)

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          "ref": "1914, Jack London, The Strength of the Strong",
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          "ref": "1879, Anthony Trollope, chapter 18, in John Caldigate",
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "1901, Upton Sinclair, chapter 1, in King Midas",
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "1905, Jack London, chapter 3, in The Game",
          "text": "He's a wild man, with all kinds of punches,—a whirlwind,— and he gets his man in the first rounds.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 March 14, Stephen Holden, \"Where Performance Enhancers Are Legal\" (film review), New York Times (retrieved 4 June 2015)",
          "text": "In no time, she has persuaded him to unleash his inner wild man, and soon they are washing down pills with booze and bouncing off the walls."
        }
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          "ref": "1946 May 27, “Textron's Trick”, in Time, retrieved 2015-06-04",
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          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2011 April 1, George Johnson, \"Richard Feynman, the Thinker\" (book review), New York Times (retrieved 4 June 2015)",
          "text": "In popular lore, Feynman often comes off as the wild man of physics, throwing out one crazy idea after another in a frenzied search for truth."
        }
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "1901, Upton Sinclair, chapter 1, in King Midas",
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          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 March 14, Stephen Holden, \"Where Performance Enhancers Are Legal\" (film review), New York Times (retrieved 4 June 2015)",
          "text": "In no time, she has persuaded him to unleash his inner wild man, and soon they are washing down pills with booze and bouncing off the walls."
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        {
          "ref": "2011 April 1, George Johnson, \"Richard Feynman, the Thinker\" (book review), New York Times (retrieved 4 June 2015)",
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        }
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    {
      "sense": "primitive person outside of civilization",
      "word": "woodwose"
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    {
      "sense": "violent, dissolute, rash, or rowdy person",
      "word": "miscreant"
    },
    {
      "sense": "violent, dissolute, rash, or rowdy person",
      "word": "rascal"
    },
    {
      "sense": "violent, dissolute, rash, or rowdy person",
      "word": "roughneck"
    },
    {
      "sense": "violent, dissolute, rash, or rowdy person",
      "word": "ruffian"
    },
    {
      "sense": "person exhibiting unorthodox views or eccentric behavior",
      "word": "kook"
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    {
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.