Dictionary — ontologydriven

wilding en · NOUN · etymology 1

From Middle English wilding, wylding, wyldyng (“grass, straw, or the stems of wild plants”), equivalent to wild + -ing.

(US, countable, uncountable) A form of youth violence characterized by a group of young people committing violent acts randomly and without specific targets.
A wild apple or apple tree.
- These were ‘wildings’, wild crab apples (Malus sylvestris), a miniature of today's, native to the British Isles. 2023, Ray Mears, chapter 1, in British Woodland, Ebury Spotlight, →ISBN:
Any plant that grows wild; a wildflower, etc.
- Ten ruddy wildings in the wood I found. 1697, Virgil, “Pastoral 1”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
- Oft from the forrest wildings he did bring, / Whose sides empurpled were with smiling red […] 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- The fruit of the tree […] is small, of little juice, and bad quality. I presume it to be a wilding. 1824–1829, Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: […] Taylor and Hessey, […]:

Spelling	Features	Labels	Source
wildings	Number=Plur		lexicographic

From wild + -ing.

(not-comparable, poetic) Not cultivated or tame; wild.
- 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: […] 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Enid”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, page 17:
- The wilding bee hums merrily by. a. 1844, William Cullen Bryant, The Gladness of Nature

From wild + -ing.

(form-of, gerund, participle, present) present participle and gerund of wild
form of wild
- Those boys are bad enough, and soon they'll start their wilding. 2012, Stephen King, 11/22/63, page 804: