Library / English Dictionary

    WONT

    Pronunciation (US): Play  (GB): Play

     I. (noun) 

    Sense 1

    Meaning:

    An established customplay

    Example:

    it was their habit to dine at 7 every evening

    Synonyms:

    habit; wont

    Classified under:

    Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

    Hypernyms ("wont" is a kind of...):

    custom; tradition (a specific practice of long standing)

    Credits

     Context examples: 

    Society is becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which you were wont to share at Bath, the very idea of them without her is abhorrent.

    (Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

    She found that she had been misled by the careful, the considerate attention of her daughter, to think the attachment, which once she had so well understood, much slighter in reality, than she had been wont to believe, or than it was now proved to be.

    (Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

    To all this information, much of which we already knew, Holmes listened with polite attention, but I, who knew him so well, could clearly see that his thoughts were elsewhere, and I detected a mixture of mingled uneasiness and expectation beneath that mask which he was wont to assume.

    (The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

    This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor’s; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London.

    (The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

    When thus gentle, Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world; and I wished most intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable, and never push me about, or scold, or task me unreasonably, as she was too often wont to do.

    (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

    She had never found it so difficult to listen to him, though nothing could exceed his solicitude and care, and though his subjects were principally such as were wont to be always interesting: praise, warm, just, and discriminating, of Lady Russell, and insinuations highly rational against Mrs Clay.

    (Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

    For this purpose I would have you know that it is not my wont to let any occasion pass where it is in any way possible that honor may be gained.

    (The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

    She said to me even more sweetly and softly than her wont:—I was uneasy about you, darling, and came in to see that you were all right.

    (Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

    In the meantime, his two men, as was the wont of visiting sailors, had gone forward into the forecastle to do some visiting themselves.

    (The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

    Baseek was old, and already he had come to know the increasing valour of the dogs it had been his wont to bully.

    (White Fang, by Jack London)


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