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say it: WIL-dur-nuhs
wilderness is a noun meaning "(politics) a state of disfavor". It carries 4 recorded senses.
(politics) a state of disfavor
“he led the Democratic party back from the wilderness”
politics
a wooded region in northeastern Virginia near Spotsylvania where bloody but inconclusive battles were fought in the American Civil War
Virginia
a wild and uninhabited area left in its natural condition
“it was a wilderness preserved for the hawks and mountaineers”
a bewildering profusion
“the duties of citizenship are lost sight of in the wilderness of interests of individuals and groups”
“a wilderness of masts in the harbor”
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.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for wilderness come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.