wild man
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Middle English wilde man, equivalent to wild + man. Cognate with Dutch wildeman (“wildman, savage”).
Noun
- A primitive man who dwells outside of civilized society; a savage person without culture.
- 1820, Washington Irving, “The Widow's Ordeal”, in The Crayon Papers:
- He had rescued the duchess from the very fangs of the monster, which, he assured the ladies, was neither a wolf, nor a bear, nor yet a wild man of the woods.
- 1914, Jack London, The Strength of the Strong:
- "So said Hair-Face, and they killed him, because, they said, he was a wild man and wanted to go back and live in a tree."
- A rowdy, dissolute, rash, or violent man.
- 1879, Anthony Trollope, chapter 18, in John Caldigate:
- [H]e was a sinner, unregenerated, a wild man in her estimation, a being of quite another kind than herself.
- 1901, Upton Sinclair, chapter 1, in King Midas:
- "David and I are very enthusiastic people, and we want to be able to make lots of noise. . . . David is quite a wild man when he gets excited with music."
- 1905, Jack London, chapter 3, in The Game:
- He's a wild man, with all kinds of punches,—a whirlwind,— and he gets his man in the first rounds.
- 2014 March 14, Stephen Holden, "Where Performance Enhancers Are Legal" (film review), New York Times (retrieved 4 June 2015):
- In no time, she has persuaded him to unleash his inner wild man, and soon they are washing down pills with booze and bouncing off the walls.
- A man who advocates unorthodox or outrageous opinions or who behaves in an eccentric manner.
- 1946 May 27, “Textron's Trick”, in Time, retrieved 4 June 2015:
- "They're saying I'm a wild man. If I turn the trick, they'll say I'm a genius."
So said Royal Little, the mild, 50-year-old president of Textron Inc., whose unconventional production ideas have built a textile empire in less than three years.
- 2011 April 1, George Johnson, "Richard Feynman, the Thinker" (book review), New York Times (retrieved 4 June 2015):
- In popular lore, Feynman often comes off as the wild man of physics, throwing out one crazy idea after another in a frenzied search for truth.
Synonyms
- (primitive person outside of civilization): woodwose
- (violent, dissolute, rash, or rowdy person): miscreant, rascal, roughneck, ruffian
- (person exhibiting unorthodox views or eccentric behavior): kook, oddball, weirdo; see also Thesaurus:strange person
Further reading
- “wild man”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.