WANTONNESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does wantonness mean? 

• WANTONNESS (noun)
  The noun WANTONNESS has 2 senses:

1. the trait of lacking restraint or control; reckless freedom from inhibition or worry

2. the quality of being lewd and lascivious

  Familiarity information: WANTONNESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WANTONNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The trait of lacking restraint or control; reckless freedom from inhibition or worry

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

abandon; unconstraint; wantonness

Context example:

she danced with abandon

Hypernyms ("wantonness" is a kind of...):

unrestraint (the quality of lacking restraint)

Derivation:

wanton (occurring without motivation or provocation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The quality of being lewd and lascivious

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

licentiousness; wantonness

Hypernyms ("wantonness" is a kind of...):

immorality (the quality of not being in accord with standards of right or good conduct)

Derivation:

wanton (casual and unrestrained in sexual behavior)

 Context examples 

Weston may grow cross from the wantonness of comfort, or his son may plague him.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

He killed to eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what he killed himself.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It may have been that the bulk of the smith caught his eye, and that he acted in pure wantonness, or it may possibly have been an accident, but, as he swung past, the twenty-foot thong of the driver’s whip hissed round, and we heard the sharp snap of it across Harrison’s leather apron.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)