means To desire or wish for something, or alternatively to lack or be without it.

from From Old Norse 'vanta,' to lack or be missing — the same icy root that gives us 'wane' and 'vain' (in its sense of empty). Tellingly, the oldest meaning was pure absence: a 'want' was a gap, a shortfall, a hole where something should be. The flip from lacking a thing to craving it came naturally — you can only yearn for what you don't yet hold — and so the word kept both faces, the empty and the longing, forever describing the same wound from opposite sides.