Definition
In legal usage, "want" carries two primary meanings that operate in distinct contexts:
1. Deficiency or absence. The more common legal use of "want" denotes the lack or absence of something required by law. A "want of consideration" means the complete absence of consideration in a contract. A "want of jurisdiction" means the court lacks authority to hear the matter. In this sense, "want" is not merely a shortage but a failure to satisfy a legal requirement.
2. Wish or desire (testamentary context). In wills and instruments of disposition, "want" functions as an expression of testamentary intent, treated as synonymous with "wish" or "desire." Courts have held that the word carries imperative force in this context — a direction that a beneficiary or executor is expected to follow, not merely a preference the testator hoped might be honored.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A desire, wish, or longing; also, lack, absence, or poverty; something needed or desired.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The state of not having; the condition of being without anything; absence or scarcity of what is needed or desired; deficiency; lack."
The gap between common and legal usage is one of precision and consequence. In ordinary English, "want" shifts fluidly between desire and deficiency. In legal drafting and judicial interpretation, the two meanings operate in separate domains: the deficiency meaning dominates contract and procedural law, while the desire meaning is reserved almost exclusively for testamentary construction. A researcher who assumes the word is merely informal or aspirational in a will may miss that courts treat it as binding direction.
Common Confusion
"Want" and "need" are sometimes conflated in legal texts but carry different weight. "Want" in the deficiency sense signals a complete absence; "need" more often implies an insufficiency or practical requirement. Similarly, in wills, "want" and "wish" are treated as synonymous by courts, but both are distinguished from precatory language that courts may decline to enforce — the line between enforceable direction and unenforceable preference turns on surrounding context, not on the word alone.
"Want" should also be distinguished from "lack," which is its modern functional equivalent in legal drafting. Older sources use "want" where contemporary instruments use "lack." Researchers reading historical pleadings, contracts, or wills must recognize "want" as the period equivalent of what modern documents express as "absence of" or "failure of."
Why It Matters in Research
The word "want" is a reliable marker of historical legal drafting. Its appearance in a document almost always signals pre-twentieth-century origin. Modern legal instruments have largely replaced it with "lack," "absence," or "failure of," which means a full-text search for "want of consideration" or "want of jurisdiction" in a historical corpus will return results that a search for "lack of consideration" would miss — and vice versa when searching modern materials.
In testamentary research, the imperative force of "want" is a recurring issue in will construction cases. When a testator writes "I want my executor to distribute equally," courts must determine whether that phrasing creates a binding obligation or merely expresses a hope. The Law Mind corpus will contain cases on both sides of this line; researchers should look for the surrounding instrument language, not just the word itself, to understand how a given court resolved the question.
The Anderson's Dictionary fragment reproduced in the source material connects "want" to maritime law in the context of necessary supplies for a vessel — a usage that reflects the deficiency meaning in a specialized commercial setting. This illustrates how "want" permeated different areas of law using the same core sense of absence or insufficiency.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier makes the testamentary point directly: "want" in a will is synonymous with "wish" and is as imperative as "desire." The citation Bouvier gives (5 Ky. Opin. 314) grounds this interpretation in actual judicial construction. Bouvier's entry is brief but precise — it does not attempt to survey the deficiency meaning, apparently treating that usage as self-evident to nineteenth-century practitioners.
Anderson's treatment, as preserved in the source fragment, does not address "want" as a standalone term but uses it in the context of maritime necessaries — a passage that illustrates the practical legal question of what a vessel "wants" (lacks, needs) to complete a voyage. This functional usage reinforces the deficiency sense without formally defining it.
Neither source addresses the full scope of "want" as it appears in pleading language ("want of prosecution," "want of equity") or in constitutional and jurisdictional contexts ("want of standing," "want of jurisdiction"). Researchers should treat the historical dictionaries as partial coverage and supplement with period treatises on pleading and practice for those usages.
Jurisdictional Note
The imperative construction of "want" in wills follows general testamentary interpretation principles and is not confined to a single jurisdiction, but it is most frequently litigated in states with active nineteenth-century case law on precatory language. Researchers working outside American sources should note that English equity courts developed much of the foundational doctrine on this question.