unwild

comparative more unwild · superlative most unwild

1. Not wild.

present singular third person unwilds · participle present unwilding · participle past unwilded · past unwilded

1. To make something not wild; to tame, civilize.

   MacAskill is tall and sturdily built, with an untidy mop of dark-blond hair that had grown during the pandemic to messianic lengths. In an effort to unwild himself for reëntry, he had recently reduced it to a dimension better suited to polite society.

   2022 August 28, “The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism”, in The New Yorker, New York, N.Y.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 Jul 2023

   2 more examples

   "We are unwilded almost from birth," says Marc Bekoff author of Rewilding Our Hearts and professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Bekoff says it's natural for humans to want to live more in sync with their natural surroundings.

   2014 November 25, Natalie DiBlasio, quoting Marc Bekoff, “Wild things: More 9-5'ers 'undoing domestication'”, in USA Today, archived from the original on 15 Aug 2020

   The past week has been spent "unwilding" my garage. This was always Ian's territory and one of my sisters came to help as, left to my own devices, I could easily have been defeated by memories. Our goal? A tidy garage with room for the extremely radical concept of keeping a car in it.

   2023 May 26, Ann Treneman, “I want a little less theatre and a little more garden”, in The Times, London: News UK, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 May 2023

   Synonyms: dewild