WANTONLY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does wantonly mean? 

• WANTONLY (adverb)
  The adverb WANTONLY has 2 senses:

1. in a wanton manner

2. in a licentious and promiscuous manner

  Familiarity information: WANTONLY used as an adverb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WANTONLY (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In a wanton manner

Context example:

the animals were killed wantonly for sport

Pertainym:

wanton (occurring without motivation or provocation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

In a licentious and promiscuous manner

Synonyms:

licentiously; promiscuously; wantonly

Context example:

this young girl has to share a room with her mother who lives promiscuously

Pertainym:

wanton (casual and unrestrained in sexual behavior)

 Context examples 

I believe that I have no enemy on earth, and none surely would have been so wicked as to destroy me wantonly.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Nobody seemed interested in the wantonly imperilled life.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with general opprobrium.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Wilfully and wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect its exertion, would be a depravity, to which the separation of two young persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few weeks, could bear no comparison.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment's inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness." And yet, a few minutes afterwards, she felt as if their being in company with each other, under their present circumstances, could only be exposing them to inadvertencies and misconstructions of the most mischievous kind.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)