English

Noun

wont ‎(usually uncountable, plural wonts)

1. One’s habitual way of doing things, practice, custom.

   He awoke at the crack of dawn, as was his wont.

   • Milton

     They are […] to be called out to their military motions, under sky or covert, according to the season, as was the Roman wont.

   • 2006, Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red:

     With a simple-minded desire, and to rid my mind of this irrepressible urge, I retired to a corner of the room, as was my wont [...]

   • 1920, James Brown Scott, The United States of America: A Study in International Organization, page 142:

     As was also the wont of international conferences, a delegate from Pennsylvania, in this instance James Wilson, proposed the appointment of a secretary and nominated William Temple Franklin

   • 1914, Items of interest - Page 83:

     Such conditions, having been the common practice for years, and, existing in a less degree in some localities to the present time, afford a tangible reason for a form of correlation that is more universal than it is the wont of the profession to admit [...]

Translations

Etymology 2

From Old English ġewunod, past participle of ġewunian.

Adjective

wont ‎(not comparable)

1. (archaic) Accustomed or used (to or with a thing).
   • Shakespeare

     I have not that alacrity of spirit, / Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.

   • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. XI, The Abbot’s Ways

     He could read English Manuscripts very elegantly, elegantissime: he was wont to preach to the people in the English tongue, though according to the dialect of Norfolk, where he had been brought up […]

2. (designating habitual behaviour) Accustomed, apt (to doing something).

   He is wont to complain loudly about his job.

   Like a 60-yard Percy Harvin touchdown run or a Joe Haden interception return, Urban Meyer’s jaw-dropping resignation Saturday was, as he’s wont to say, “a game-changer.” — Sunday December 27, 2009, Stewart Mandel, INSIDE COLLEGE FOOTBALL, Meyer’s shocking resignation rocks college coaching landscape

See also

• used to
• prone to

Translations

Verb

wont ‎(third-person singular simple present wonts, present participle wonting, simple past and past participle wonted)

1. (transitive, archaic) To make (someone) used to; to accustom.
   • 1830, Joseph Plumb Martin, A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier, Ch. VI:

     I have heard it remarked by the old farmers, that when beasts are first transferred from one place to another, that if they keep them without food for two or three days, it will go far towards wonting them to their new situation.

2. (intransitive, archaic) To be accustomed.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:

     But by record of antique times I finde / That wemen wont in warres to beare most sway [...].

Translations

Anagrams

• nowt
• town