wilding
see also: Wilding
Etymology 1

From Middle English wilding, wylding, wyldyng, equivalent to wild + -ing.

Noun

wilding (plural wildings)

  1. A wild apple or apple tree.
  2. Any plant that grows wild; a wildflower, etc.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC ↗:
      Oft from the forrest wildings he did bring, / Whose sides empurpled were with smiling red […]
    • 1697, Virgil, “Pastoral 1”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC ↗:
      Ten ruddy wildings in the wood I found.
    • 1824–1829, Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: […] Taylor and Hessey, […]:
      The fruit of the tree […] is small, of little juice, and bad quality. I presume it to be a wilding.
Etymology 2

From wild + -ing.

Verb
  1. Present participle and gerund of wild
    • 2012, Stephen King, 11/22/63, page 804:
      Those boys are bad enough, and soon they'll start their wilding.
Adjective

wilding (not comparable)

  1. (poetic) Not cultivated or tame; wild.
    • a. 1844, William Cullen Bryant, The Gladness of Nature:
      The wilding bee hums merrily by.
    • 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Enid”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC ↗, page 17 ↗:
      And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, / Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, / And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: […]

Wilding
Proper noun
  1. Surname.
Noun

wilding (plural wildings)

  1. (philately) Any of a series of British stamps that have an image of Queen Elizabeth II based on a portrait by Dorothy Wilding.



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