wilding

plural wildings

1. 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

2. 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

   2 more examples

   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, […]

plural wildings

1. UScountableuncountablecriminologyA form of youth violence characterized by a group of young people committing violent acts randomly and without specific targets.

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of wild

   Those boys are bad enough, and soon they'll start their wilding.

   2012, Stephen King, 11/22/63, page 804

1. not comparablepoeticNot cultivated or tame; wild.

   The wilding bee hums merrily by.

   a. 1844, William Cullen Bryant, The Gladness of Nature

   1 more example

   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

1. A surname.

plural Wildings

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