willen.
to want, desire
Meaning & usage
to want, desire
Ik wil een ijsje.
Wil je dat ik langskom?
to want to, will, be willing to
Hij wil gaan slapen.
to want to go somewhere (cf. English want in)
Ze wilden het huis in.
to wish, would like, would (as in dated English I would that)
Ik wou dat ik dat kon.
Where this word comes from
From Middle Dutch willen, from Old Dutch willen, from Proto-West Germanic *willjan, from Proto-Germanic *wiljaną, from Proto-Indo-European *welh₁-. The variant past forms with ou go back to early Middle Dutch wolde(n), following the regular shift old, olt > oud, out.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.