want

Etymology 1

From Middle English wanten (“to lack”), 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-.

verb

1. (transitive) To wish for or desire (something); to feel a need or desire for; to crave or demand.
   What do you want to eat?  I want you to leave.  I never wanted to go back to live with my mother.
   Energy has seldom been found where we need it when we want it. Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame. With more settled people, animals were harnessed to capstans or caged in treadmills to turn grist into meal. 2013 July-August, Henry Petroski, “Geothermal Energy”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 4
   I want to find a supermarket. — Oh, okay. The supermarket is at 1500 Irving Street. It is near the apartment. — Great! Audio (US) (file) 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)
   1. (by extension) 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.
      Depression wants you to feel like the world is dark and that you are not worthy of happiness. The first step to making your life better from this day forward is to stop believing these lies.
2. (transitive, in particular) 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.
   Danish police want him for embezzlement.
   But now it's different, if the police want him for murder. 2010, Fred Vargas, The Chalk Circle Man, Vintage Canada, page 75
3. (intransitive) To desire">desire (to experience desire">desire); to wish.
   You can leave if you want.
   TYRION: You don't want it? BRAN: I don't really want anymore. 2019 May 5, "The Last of the Starks", Game of Thrones season 8 episode 4 (written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss)
4. (colloquial, usually second person, often future tense) To be advised to do something (compare should, ought).
   You’ll want to repeat this three or four times to get the best result.
5. (transitive, now colloquial) To lack and be in need of or require (something, such as a noun or verbal noun).
   The lady, it is said, will inherit a fortune of three hundred pounds a year, with two cool thousands left by an uncle, on her arriving at the age of twenty-one, of which she wants but a few months. 1741, The Gentleman's and London Magazine: Or Monthly Chronologer, 1741-1794, page 559
   Oh Jeanie, it will be hard, after every thing is ready for our happiness, if we should be sundered. It wants but a few days o' Martinmas, and then I maun enter on my new service on Loch Rannoch, where a bonny shieling is ready ... 1839, Chambers's Journal, page 123
   In this we have just read an address to children in England, Ireland, and Scotland, in behalf of children who want food to keep them from starvation. 1847, The American Protestant, page 27
   That chair wants fixing.
6. (transitive, now rare) To have occasion for (something requisite or useful); to require or need.
7. (intransitive, dated) To be lacking or deficient or absent.
   There was something wanting in the play.
8. (intransitive, dated) To be in a state of destitution; to be needy; to lack.
   The paupers desperately want.
9. (transitive, archaic) To lack and be without, to not have (something).
   Not what we wish, but what we want, / Oh, let thy grace supply! 1765, James Merrick, Psalams
   Pray Mr Marvell, can it be / You think to have persuaded me? / Then let me say: you want the art / To woo, much less to win my heart. 1981, A. D. Hope, “His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell”, in A Book of Answers
   She wanted anything she needed.
10. (transitive, obsolete, by extension) To lack and (be able to) do without.
    For Law, Physick and Divinitie, need so the help of tongs and sciences, as thei can not want them, and yet thei require so a hole mans studie, as thei may parte with no tyme to other lerning, ... 1797, The European Magazine, and London Review, page 226

noun

1. (countable) A desire, wish, longing.
2. (countable, often followed by of) Lack, absence, deficiency.
   She showed a want of caution in renting her house to complete strangers.
3. (uncountable) Poverty.
   Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want. 1713, Jonathan Swift, A Preface to Bishop Burnet's Introduction
4. Something needed or desired; a thing of which the loss is felt.
   Habitual superfluities become actual wants. 1785, William Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy
5. (UK, mining) A depression in coal strata, hollowed out before the subsequent deposition took place.

Etymology 2

From Middle English wont (“mole”), from Old English wand, wond, from Proto-Germanic *wanduz.

noun

1. (dialectal) A mole (Talpa europea).
   Lic. She hath the ears of a want. / Pec. Doth she want ears? 1592, John Lyly, Midas; republished in Charles Wentworth Dilke, editor, Old English Plays: Being a Selection from the Early Dramatic Writers, volume 1, London: Whittingham and Rowland, 1814