WOULD-BE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does would-be mean? 

• WOULD-BE (adjective)
  The adjective WOULD-BE has 1 sense:

1. unfulfilled or frustrated in realizing an ambition

  Familiarity information: WOULD-BE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WOULD-BE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Unfulfilled or frustrated in realizing an ambition

Synonyms:

manque; would-be

Similar:

ambitious (having a strong desire for success or achievement)

 Context examples 

And the funniest part of it is that many of the clever people, and all the would-be clever people, allow the idlers so to impose upon them.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

If you can conceive me as a thin and colourless cord upon which my would-be pearls are strung, you will be accepting me upon the terms which I should wish.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Heliconians have evolved to produce their own cyanide which makes them highly poisonous and they have distinct and brightly coloured wings which act as a warning to would-be predators.

(Butterflies are genetically wired to choose a mate that looks just like them, University of Cambridge)

Yet he would be so anxious for her being perfectly warm, would be so interested about her father, and so delighted with Mrs. Weston; and at last would begin admiring her drawings with so much zeal and so little knowledge as seemed terribly like a would-be lover, and made it some effort with her to preserve her good manners.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

The secret of long life for meerkats is not to battle the inevitable declines of ageing, but to be the ruler of your community, profiting from social support and cracking down on would-be rivals.

(Breeder meerkats age faster, but their subordinates still die younger, University of Cambridge)

By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

They are too many, and willy-nilly they'll drag down the would-be equestrian before ever he gets astride.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)