New Word: Wild

New Word #102

Wild, Wildness, Wilderness, Wilder, Bewilder

• wildness or wilderness: It seems that these two words are similar. It is a way of making a noun out of the adjective “wild”. However I think I see wilderness more often than wildness for some unexplained reasons.
• wilder and bewilder: These two words are also similar–both mean perplexed and puzzled.

Wilding, Rewilding, Wildebeest

• wilding: I’ve never read or heard this word before. Google says it means (informally, U.S.) that a gang let loose on the street or in a public park.
• rewilding: Rewilding is a fascinating word since it means to repopulate an area with the animals that are indigenous to the area. For example, some people want to reconstruct mammoths (woolly elephants) and repopulate the arctic circle with them.
• wildebeest: It is a large African antelope and you can see the beautiful videos of wildebeest migrating from one area to another. So many of them. It’s like an endless troop of wildebeests.

Wield, Unwieldy, Weird

• wield: hold (onto a tool); use (power)
• unwieldy: Unwieldy is a word that one can remember the first time one encounter it. It’s an adjective and it really means that one cannot wield it due to its size, weight etc. For example, a heavy cooking pan is rather unwieldy for her to deal with. Actually I am having one unwieldy pan right now, which I should thrown away but I just can’t bring myself to do it.
• weird: very strange. Weird is a commonly used word. However the word weird is not as nearly weird as the word uncanny. Uncanny means weird in a supernatural way. For example you meet a stranger who has an uncanny resemblance to a childhood friend.

Wire, Wired, Haywire

• Wired is an interesting magazine I subscribed to but I only read less than half of it each month.
• Wired can also mean being nervous. Sometimes in TV shows, a person being wired means the person is wearing a listening device.
• Haywire: I’ve always wanted to use this word but have never got the chance to do it. It means out of control.

Whir, Whirl, Whirlwind

These three words mean different things despite their similar looks.

• whir: low nonstop sound. For example a washing machine or a dishwasher
• whirl: moving around and around, like when water is being poured down a drain.
• whirlwind: It means a tornado kind of air circling around and around. Most often it is used as a metaphor to describe an energetic and enthusiastic process.

Whist, Whistle, Whilst, Wist, Wistful

• whist: It is a kind of card game.
• whistle: a sound made by making the lips into certain shape, which I can never do.
• whilst: while
• wist: old form of “wit”
• wistful: It means a melancholy regret. This word is often used in literature when one can’t find an accurate description for a vague smile or glance.