'Tis the cruel gripe, / That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts, / The hope of better things, the chance to win, / The wiſh to ſhine, the thirſt to be amus'd, / That at the found of Winter's hoary wing, / Unpeople all our counties, of ſuch herds, / Of flutt'ring, loit'ring, cringing, begging, looſe, / And wanton vagrants, as make London, vaſt / And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.
if wenches will hang out lures for fellows, it is no matter what they suffer: I detest such creatures; and it would be much better for them that their faces had been seamed with the smallpox: but I must confess I never saw any of this wanton behaviour in poor Jenny ....
1874, Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd:
I know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that valentine—forgive me, sir—it was a wanton thing which no woman with any self-respect should have done.
1946, (w), History of Western Philosophy, I.21:
People should not marry too young, because, if they do, the children will be weak and female, the wives will become wanton, and the husbands stunted in their growth.
1776, Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1:
The grave simplicity of the philosopher was ill calculated to engage her wanton levity, of to fix that unbounded passion for variety, which often discovered personal merit in the meanest of mankind.
the market price will rise more or less above the natural price, according as either the greatness of the deficiency, or the wealth and wanton luxury of the competitors, happen to animate more or less the eagerness of the competition.
Edward himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her character, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost meanness of wanton ill-nature.
2009, Ben White, The Guardian, 10 Aug 2009:
these developments in Gaza are a consequence of the state of siege that the tiny territory has been under – a society that has been fenced-in, starved, and seen its very fabric torn apart by unemployment and wanton military destruction.
I would have thee gone — / And yet no farther than a wanton's bird, / That lets it hop a little from her hand, / Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, / And with a silken thread plucks it back again(..)