A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
975 entries
wild
Uncontrolled, undomesticated, self-willed. A wild animal is not an animal without order — it is an animal whose order is its own. The word carries a charge that domesticated and natural do not. Something wild has not been consulted about our plans for it.
Etymology
Old English “wilde” (in the natural state, untamed, undomesticated), from Proto-Germanic “*wildia-,” a word of uncertain origin — possibly from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE, the reconstructed common ancestor of most European and South Asian languages) root “*welt-“ meaning “woodlands, wild.” One etymologist finds no secure Indo-European root at all, noting only Welsh “gwyllt” (wild) as a possible cognate. Related to Old Norse “villr” and German “wild.”