Blog 8 - What is Wild?

wild/wīld

Adverb: In an uncontrolled manner: "the bad guys shot wild".


Adjective: (of an animal or plant) Living or growing in the natural environment; not domesticated or cultivated.


Noun: A natural state or uncultivated or uninhabited region: "kiwis are virtually extinct in the wild".


Synonyms: adjective. savage - mad - feral
noun. waste
What is wild? A few things come to mind…

First to enter my head would be wild as in reckless. This is the wild that means you went crazy, did something fun, and had a blast over the weekend. Some students might use it in the connotation that they got wasted at a party after homecoming and “got wild.” To me, having a wild weekend is being able to go out and do something that you haven’t done in a long time and look back and think about how crazy and fun it ended up being.

Wild in other terms makes me think of lions, tigers, bears (oh my). This kind of wild is those uncontrolled animals that are fascinating and majestic not only because of how they look but because of their actions. These animals do things the way it was originally done in the world: they hunt their prey and make it their dinner.

Still yet, wild can be what is going on with Occupy Wall Street. In this case the word wild represents the disbelief that comes to mind when I imagine hundreds of thousands of people rioting for a cause they believe in. This, to me, is wild because they might not have things in common, but they still stand outside and protest because it is something they want to fight for because it is important to them.

As far as the wild being in each of us, I completely agree. All those times that you lash out and do something obscene that you didn’t think you could do, you are wild. Wild is really all about things that might not happen very frequently, so when they do happen we regard them as random yet amazing, whether it is amazing in a good way or amazing in a bad way.

I find wild to also mean that clear, open desert space with nothing but coyotes and cactuses. That is just another example of something that comes to mind when someone says wild.

Wild is not a singly defined word at all. Wild means a different thing to each person, depending on the context that it is being said or used in a sentence. When someone tells me “this weekend was wild!” I assume they are talking about that crazy night out they had that they will remember forever. If someone says “the wild” I assume they mean the wild that either is full of animals or the wild that is a desert-like terrain.

People will never only have one definition for a word, because each person is unique and they have different opinions and views on everything, especially words. To me wild could mean one thing and to a friend of mine it could be something that isn’t similar at all. It depends on the person to define the word.