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PlainSpell

want

/wɑnt/verb, noun

want is spelled W-A-N-T. The wrong spelling people search most is watn: about 70 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 34 of all searches for the word. Want is a verb meaning “To wish for or desire (something); to feel a need or desire for; to crave, hanker, or demand”.

How many letters and syllables are in want?

Letters4: W-A-N-T
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing1,096 times per million words; the 96th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched3; the most searched, watn, about 70 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Pairs people search
Sounds like
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell want?

Want is spelled W-A-N-T. 3 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 15 of the searches for want in either form.

wantthe right spelling2,300 searches a month
watnn and t swapped70 searches a month
wnata and n swapped70 searches a month
whantan extra h30 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is want?

Want appears 1,096 times per million words in written English, the 96th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce want?

  • UK /wɒnt/
  • US /wɑnt/
  • US /wʌnt/

As a noun (“A mole (Talpa europea)”): /wɒnt/.

Want has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-to_want.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-want.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Nattes_à_chat-want.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with want

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

want vs wont260 G

Sounds like: wa'n't (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with want?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as want from its last stressed vowel (/ɑnt/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: tawn.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of want

  • wants present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • wanting participle, present
  • wanted participle, past, singular, he/she/it, plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does want mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

verb

  1. 1

    To wish for or desire (something); to feel a need or desire for; to crave, hanker, or demand.

    I want you as a friend, not a foe.

  2. 2

    To make it easy or tempting to do something undesirable, or to make it hard or challenging to refrain from doing it.

    The game developers of Candy Crush want you to waste large, copious amounts of your money on in-game purchases to buy boosters and lives.

  3. 3

    To wish, desire, or demand to see, have the presence of or do business with.

    Ma’am, you are exactly the professional we want for this job.

  4. 4

    To desire (to experience desire); to wish.

    You can leave if you want.

  5. 5

    colloquialTo be advised to do or aim for something (compare should, ought).

    You’ll want to repeat this three or four times to get the best result.

  6. 6

    colloquialTo lack and be in need of or require (something, such as a noun or verbal noun).

    That chair wants fixing and a clean.

  7. 7

    archaicTo have occasion for (something requisite or useful); to require or need.

  8. 8

    datedTo be lacking or deficient or absent.

    There was something wanting in the play.

noun

  1. 1

    A desire, wish, longing.

  2. 2

    Lack, absence, deficiency.

    She showed a want of caution in renting her house to complete strangers.

  3. 3

    Poverty.

  4. 4

    Something needed or desired; a thing of which the loss is felt.

  5. 5

    UKA depression in coal strata, hollowed out before the subsequent deposition took place.

  6. 6

    A mole (Talpa europea).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Want in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchvouloir (to desire), besoin, désir (desire, wish, longing), manque (lack (of)), pauvreté, misère (poverty – see also poverty)
Germanwollen (to desire), Not (desire, wish, longing), Mangel (lack (of))
Portuguesequerer, desejar (to desire), afã, vontade (desire, wish, longing), falta (lack (of)), pobreza (poverty – see also poverty)
Spanishquerer, desear (to desire), afán, anhelo, querencia (desire, wish, longing), falta (lack (of))

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does want come from?

From Middle English wanten (“to lack, to need”), from Old Norse vanta (“to lack”), from Proto-Germanic *wanatōną (“to be wanting, lack”), from *wanô (“lack, deficiency”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- (“empty”). Cognate with Middle High German wan (“not full, empty”), Middle Dutch wan (“empty, poor”), Old English wana (“want, lack, absence, deficiency”), Latin vanus (“empty”). See wan, wan-.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after want