wanton

1. 1.

   occurring without motivation or provocation

   “motiveless malignity”

   “unprovoked and dastardly attack”

   Synonymsmotivelessunprovoked

   Similarunmotivated
2. 2.

   casual and unrestrained in sexual behavior

   “her easy virtue”

   “he was told to avoid loose (or light) women”

   “wanton behavior”

   Synonymseasylightloosepromiscuoussluttish

   Similarunchaste

1. 1.

   lewd or lascivious woman

   Broadersensualist

   Narrowerlight-o'-love

Other forms of wanton

plural

wantons·

past tense

wantonned·

present participle

wantonning·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about wanton

What does wanton mean?

wanton means "waste time; spend one's time idly or inefficiently". That is the primary sense; the word has 9 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in wanton?

wanton has 2 syllables: wan-ton. The stress falls on "wan". In IPA it is /ˈwɔntən/.

What is another word for wanton?

Close synonyms include piddle, wanton away, piddle away, trifle, wanton away. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is wanton a common word?

wanton is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.