wild man

See also: wildman and wild-man

English

Alternative forms

• wildman

Etymology

From Middle English wilde man, equivalent to wild +‎ man. Cognate with Dutch wildeman (“wildman, savage”).

Noun

wild man (plural wild men)

1. 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."

2. 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.

3. 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.