A would-be thief got a big surprise when a group of women chanting "Jesus" scared the intruder away from their commune.
Source: tatoeba (2830149)
Would-be
//ˈwʊd biː//
Synonyms for "would-be" (21 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (5)
Strong matches (6)
Related words (10)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Translations
15 translations across 7 languages.
Basque
1 entries- sasi adj (attempting or desiring something)
Bulgarian
2 entries- неуспял adj (unfulfilled or frustrated in realizing an ambition)
- претендиращ adj (attempting or desiring something)
French
3 entries- en puissance adj (attempting or desiring something)
- pseudo adj (attempting or desiring something)
- soi-disant adj (unfulfilled or frustrated in realizing an ambition)
German
2 entries- möchtegern adj (attempting or desiring something)
- pseudo adj (attempting or desiring something)
Hungarian
2 entries- jövendőbeli adj (attempting or desiring something)
- leendő adj (attempting or desiring something)
Polish
2 entries- aspirujący adj (attempting or desiring something)
- niedoszły adj (unfulfilled or frustrated in realizing an ambition)
Russian
3 entries- мечтающий adj (attempting or desiring something)
- несостоявшийся adj (unfulfilled or frustrated in realizing an ambition)
- претендующий adj (attempting or desiring something)
Sample sentences
19 total sentences available.
Mary feared that her lap dog could not be the excuse for all of her emissions, especially when other cohabitants possessed refined senses. Half a cup of pâté with every meal would suffice, she figured, to fool any would-be Sherlock.
Source: tatoeba (6918007)
The would-be junior at Carnegie Mellon says that she’s always been “five years ahead” in knowing what she wanted to do.
Source: tatoeba (8958913)
The warrior bands came and went, prosecuting their family feuds; but the great mass continued to till the soil, taking but little notice of their would-be rulers, so long as they did not interfere with the independence of their village communities.
Source: tatoeba (10265596)
Showing 4 of 19 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.