Wantsome

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Archaic or dialect term meaning lacking something needed or expected, or being deficient in some quality
2. An old-fashioned word describing something that is missing a required part or amount of what it should have
3. Used in older or regional English to mean short of, deficient, or not having enough of a certain thing

Etymology: "Wantsome" is a plain compound built from "want" and the suffix "-some," which in Middle English meant "causing or characterized by" a quality, as in "lonesome" or "awesome." Pairing the two produced a word meaning "lacking, wanting, deficient," a sense now rarely heard outside dialect speech. The "want" half comes from Old Norse "vanta," meaning "to be lacking," which entered English during the Viking-age contact with Scandinavian speakers and gradually displaced the Old English "wanian" in most senses. The "-some" element descends from Old English "-sum," a suffix attaching to nouns and adjectives to give the sense of "having a certain quality." Because "-some" was productive for centuries, "wantsome" was formed on the same pattern as many other adjectives, and its meaning sits close to the older sense of "want" as "absence" or "need." The word is a transparent combination of its parts, so its meaning follows directly from them.