Wont / Won't | Common Errors In English Usage And More - Paul Brians

Skip to main content Skip to navigation

• Search
• Contact
• Share

• Home
• Common Errors in English Usage
  • List of Common Errors
  • Videos Created by NBC Based on This Web Site
  • Commonly Made Suggestions
  • More Errors (Eggcorns)
  • Non-errors
  • Other Commonly Misspelled Words
  • Common Errors: The Book
  • Common Errors: The Podcast
• Science Fiction-Related Materials
• Nuclear War-related Materials
• Bibliographies & Filmographies
  • Nuke Pop
  • Nuclear Texts and Contexts
• Study Materials
• Paul Brians’ Photos
• Humor & Miscellany
• The Chernobyl Poems

People often leave the apostrophe out of “won’t,” meaning “will not.” “Wont” is a completely different and rarely used word meaning “habitual custom.” Perhaps people are reluctant to believe this is a contraction because it doesn’t make obvious sense like “cannot” being contracted to “can’t.” The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that “won’t” is a contraction of a nonstandard form: “woll not.”

Quite a few confused folks substitute “want” for “wont,” leading to mangled expressions such as “such is my want.”

Back to list of errors

BUY THE BOOK!

Search for:

• absorbtion
• please RSVP / Please Reply
• based around
• seperate/separate
• 100’s / hundreds

• March 2023
• January 2023
• May 2022
• August 2019
• May 2019
• January 2019
• June 2017
• May 2017
• April 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• May 2016

• 18th and 19th Century European Classics
• About Paul Brians
• Answers to questions asked by students- World Civilzations
• Common Error
• Discographies & Filmographies
• Humor & Miscellany
• Love in the Arts
• Nuclear Texts & Contexts
• Nuke pop
• Operas in MMR at Holland/New Library
• Other materials
• Paul Brians Home Page
• Photography
• Reading About the World
• Reading About the World: A Reader for the Study of World Civilizations
• Satanic Verses
• Science Fiction and Nuclear War
• Science Fiction and Nuclear War-Related Topics
• Science Fiction Research Bibliography
• Science Fiction-Related Materials
• Study Guide
• Syllabus
• The Bible as Literature
• The Chernobyl Poems
• Volumes
• Washington State University
• World Civ
• World Literature in English of India, Africa, and the Caribbean

• Log in
• Entries feed
• Comments feed
• WordPress.org