Wingless means without wings. A penguin is sometimes called wingless in the sense that, while it has small flippers that evolved from wings, it cannot fly. Ants and termites have wingless workers, while their queens and males grow wings for mating flights. Some insects, like silverfish, are naturally wingless throughout their entire lives.

In mythology and imagination, wingless often means grounded or limited. When Icarus flew too close to the sun in the Greek myth, the wax holding his feathers melted and he became wingless, plummeting into the sea. A dragon described as wingless would have to crawl or slither rather than soar through the clouds.

The word can suggest something is missing what it should have. If you ordered a toy airplane and it arrived wingless, you'd feel cheated because wings are essential to what makes an airplane an airplane. But sometimes wingless is simply a neutral description: kiwi birds are flightless, and they thrive perfectly well in their forest homes without ever needing to fly.