Wild versus Tame

The words wild and tame go back to ancient Germanic roots, and perhaps earlier still, if they are—respectively—cognate with Latin ferus “wild” and domare “dominate,” as suggested by the Oxford English Dictionary. They always had the meanings they have now, and they also were always opposed. The first English reference to tame, an Anglo-Saxon gloss of 888 c.e., explicitly opposes them. They are defined in relation to each other. A wolf is wilder than a bad or willful dog, but the latter is wilder than a thoroughly subjugated one; the cur is tame relative to the wolf, wild relative to the good pet. Jasper National Park is wilder than Yosemite, and Yosemite is wilder than Times Square. Naturally occurring species of roses are wilder than hybrid single roses, but the latter, even when they are modern hybrids, seem wilder to gardeners than the huge multi-petaled florists' roses. Formerly cultivated land reverts slowly and gradually to the wild. Tame animals can go wild or feral.

Wild has always had its present double or extended meaning: Natural as opposed to humanmanaged, and uncontrolled or hyper-reactive as opposed to tranquil and calm. A wild person can be violently emotional or somehow remote mentally from ordinary people. Latin ferus has similar extended meanings. Tame means controlled by humans; its secondary meaning of dull and ordinary is not attested before 1600. Wilderness is a derivative of wild, with attributive suffixes. Other languages have equivalent, but not always exactly equivalent, words. Chinese ye implies not only “wild” and “wilderness,” [Page 1967]but also “abandoned land.” Romance languages usually use words derived not from ferus, but from Latin sylvaticus, “of the forest,” such as: sauvage (French), and selvatico (Italian). These usually have a negative, even violent connotation, as in the English derivative savage (from the French). Yucatec Maya parallels Latin: k'aaxil “of the forest” and baalche' “things of the trees” are the nearest equivalent to “wild things.” However, in Maya the connotation is good: The Maya love the forest and have strong positive associations with its inhabitants. Tame in Yucatec Maya is alakbil, “raised by humans,” a close parallel with English.

In short, wild and tame are concepts that are broadly held—every culture feels the need to contrast the home-reared with the natural and uncontrolled, but culture and tradition powerfully influence their connotations. People understand them differently at different times and places. Wild and wilderness had broadly negative connotations through much of history. Conversely, wildness can be so valued that it is imitated. English landscape architects of the 17th–19th centuries laid out artificial wildernesses, and saw nothing oxymoronic about this. Today, restoration ecologists recreate the wild or the wilderness. In most countries, opinions range from strongly pro-wild (as in the John Muir tradition of conservation), to strongly antiwild. This leads to political debates that often become impassioned. The United States, home of the ideas of conservation, national parks, and national wilderness areas, is also home to a powerful pro-development ethic that defines progress as increasingly radical transformation of natural resources into commodities. Holders of these views come into conflict. The concept of tame inspires less emotion, but it too has positive and negative connotations.

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