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Wannabe 

Professor David Crystal 

A very unusual feature of SOME languages, and of English in 

particular, is that you can have phrases that can be used as 

words: a phrase used as a word! 'Wannabe' is a good case in 

point. It's of course a colloquial version of "want to be" – 

wannabe: w - a- double n- a – b – e  -- sometimes with two e's 

at the end. If I say "he's a wannabe", what I mean is he's an 

admirer or a fan; somebody who wants to emulate a celebrity by 

copying that celebrity's dress or behaviour or something like this.  

It actually started back in the United States sometime in the 

1980s. I think it first became very popular when people wanted 

to be like Madonna the pop star. Certainly that's when I first 

heard it very very regularly and a 'wannabe' person is someone 

who wants to be as famous, or just get some reflected glory 

from the person, in this case Madonna, that they were admiring. 

It reflects the colloquial pronunciation.  

Notice, it's not a very polite expression. You can talk about other people as being 

wannabes, but you wouldn't say that you yourself were a wannabe, and if you say 

about somebody "he's a wannabe", you're really being a little bit sceptical about 

that person's state of mind I think, to some extent. But it's a very popular term – 

you'll hear everybody use it these days.