waste
Americanverb (used with object)
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wastes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
wasted,
past participle, past
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wasting
present participle
-
to consume, spend, or employ uselessly or without adequate return; use to no avail or profit; squander.
to waste money; to waste words.
- Synonyms:
- expend, fritter away, dissipate, misspend
- Antonyms:
- save
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to fail or neglect to use.
to waste an opportunity.
-
to destroy or consume gradually; wear away.
The waves waste the rock of the shore.
- Synonyms:
- erode
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to wear down or reduce in bodily substance, health, or strength; emaciate; enfeeble.
to be wasted by disease or hunger.
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to destroy, devastate, or ruin.
a country wasted by a long and futile war.
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Slang. to kill or murder.
verb (used without object)
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wastes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
wasted,
past participle, past
-
wasting
present participle
-
to be consumed, spent, or employed uselessly or without giving full value or being fully utilized or appreciated.
-
to become gradually consumed, used up, or worn away.
A candle wastes in burning.
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to become physically worn; lose flesh or strength; become emaciated or enfeebled.
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to diminish gradually; dwindle, as wealth, power, etc..
The might of England is wasting.
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to pass gradually, as time.
noun
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wastes
plural
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useless consumption or expenditure; use without adequate return; an act or instance of wasting.
The project was a waste of material, money, time, and energy.
- Synonyms:
- dissipation
-
neglect, instead of use.
waste of opportunity.
-
gradual destruction, impairment, or decay.
the waste and repair of bodily tissue.
- Synonyms:
- consumption, emaciation, decline, diminution
-
devastation or ruin, as from war or fire.
- Synonyms:
- desolation, spoliation
-
a region or place devastated or ruined.
The forest fire left a blackened waste.
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anything unused, unproductive, or not properly utilized.
-
an uncultivated tract of land.
-
a wild region or tract of land; desolate country, desert, or the like.
-
an empty, desolate, or dreary tract or extent.
a waste of snow.
-
anything left over or superfluous, as excess material or by-products, not of use for the work in hand.
a fortune made in salvaging factory wastes.
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remnants, as from the working of cotton, used for wiping machinery, absorbing oil, etc.
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Physical Geography. material derived by mechanical and chemical disintegration of rock, as the detritus transported by streams, rivers, etc.
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garbage; refuse.
-
wastes, excrement.
adjective
-
not used or in use.
waste energy; waste talents.
-
(of land, regions, etc.) wild, desolate, barren, or uninhabited; desert.
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(of regions, towns, etc.) in a state of desolation and ruin, as from devastation or decay.
-
left over or superfluous.
to utilize waste products of manufacture.
-
having served or fulfilled a purpose; no longer of use.
-
rejected as useless or worthless; refuse.
to salvage waste products.
-
Physiology. pertaining to material unused by or unusable to the organism.
-
designed or used to receive, hold, or carry away excess, superfluous, used, or useless material (often in combination).
a waste pipe; waste container.
-
Obsolete. excessive; needless.
idioms
-
go to waste, to fail to be used or consumed; be wasted.
She hates to see good food go to waste.
-
lay waste, to devastate; destroy; ruin.
Forest fires lay waste thousands of acres yearly.
verb
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(tr) to use, consume, or expend thoughtlessly, carelessly, or to no avail
-
(tr) to fail to take advantage of
to waste an opportunity
-
to lose or cause to lose bodily strength, health, etc
-
to exhaust or become exhausted
-
(tr) to ravage
-
informal (tr) to murder or kill
I want that guy wasted by tomorrow
noun
-
the act of wasting or state of being wasted
-
a failure to take advantage of something
-
anything unused or not used to full advantage
-
anything or anyone rejected as useless, worthless, or in excess of what is required
-
garbage, rubbish, or trash
-
a land or region that is devastated or ruined
-
a land or region that is wild or uncultivated
-
physiol
-
the useless products of metabolism
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indigestible food residue
-
-
disintegrated rock material resulting from erosion
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law reduction in the value of an estate caused by act or neglect, esp by a life-tenant
adjective
-
rejected as useless, unwanted, or worthless
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produced in excess of what is required
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not cultivated, inhabited, or productive
waste land
-
-
of or denoting the useless products of metabolism
-
of or denoting indigestible food residue
-
-
destroyed, devastated, or ruined
-
designed to contain or convey waste products
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to devastate or destroy
-
An unusable or unwanted substance or material, such as a waste product.
-
See also hazardous waste landfill
Synonym Usage
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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wastesimple
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wastessimple
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have wastedperfect
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has wastedperfect
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am wastingprogressive
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are wastingprogressive
-
is wastingprogressive
-
have been wastingperfect progressive
-
has been wastingperfect progressive
Past
-
wastedsimple
-
had wastedperfect
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was wastingprogressive
-
were wastingprogressive
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had been wastingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of waste
First recorded in 1150–1200; 1960–65 waste for def. 6; (for the adjective) Middle English, from Old North French wast (compare Old French g(u)ast ), from Latin vāstus “desolate, destroyed, empty, immense”; verb and noun derivative of the adjective; cf. vast ( def. )
Explanation
If waste is useless, then to waste is to fritter away. Don't waste time putting your waste paper in the waste basket, just chuck it in the recycling bin. As a noun, waste, meaning “desolate regions” stems from the Old English westen, meaning “a desert, wilderness.” Later, it came to imply a “useless activity,” and even later than that, “refuse matter,” or “trash.” As a verb, waste “devastate, ruin,” comes from the Latin vastare, “to lay waste.” It later adopted the sense of “spend or consume uselessly.” It can also mean “to kill.” The poet E. E. Cummings said, “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
Vocabulary lists containing waste
Common Five-letter Words for Wordle, List 4
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Natural Resources and the Environment - Introductory
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Earth Science - Middle School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
At the same time, industry generates vast quantities of silicon-rich waste, including coal ash residue, red mud, mine tailings, concrete debris, waste glass, and metallurgical slag.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 19, 2026
No one wants to waste the weekend haggling over $20.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026
“I wouldn’t do that to her, I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t waste everyone’s time.”
From Slate ● Sep. 19, 2026
The finalists also include a range of community-led initiatives tackling environmental challenges such as waste reduction, nature restoration, and clean energy.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
Maybe, like picking out clothes, he couldn’t waste time on the mundane things that ordinary people did.
From "City Spies" by James Ponti
It just wastes the strategy — and your money.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 14, 2026
In 1958, working-class voters and Democrats were within 5 points of each other on whether government wastes a lot of tax money.
From Salon ● Aug. 9, 2026
His 13 league goals for Brighton last season came from 12.5 expected goals, a steady return that reflects a striker who finishes at expectation and rarely wastes chances.
From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2026
“We believe Meta’s strategy diffusion wastes shareholder capital,” she wrote.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
And the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread, could have swallowed an aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said to roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben.
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
While Genghis may have been the most skilled chief among his Mongol contemporaries, his skills would have been wasted if he had been born 20 years earlier, or 200 miles to the south.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 2026
In the age of busyness, it’s easy to worry that even a moment wasted could transform into a pile of stress, and money lost.
From Slate ● Sep. 14, 2026
If you’re working hard at the wrong things, “that's wasted effort.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026
Has the lack of change in the spring led to a wasted summer?
From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2026
But if you wasted every day worrying about the next....And you never knew what was coming, anyway.
From "Homecoming" by Cynthia Voigt
There's just no point in me travelling, wasting my time whilst I'm getting booed.
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2026
Without collecting race and ethnicity data in the census, these estimates could not be produced, needlessly wasting resources and endangering lives.
From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026
Executives agreed that AI is delivering outsize value in some cases, but they found that in the majority of cases, it’s wasting more money than it’s worth.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 2026
“The more time I’m spending wasting their time, they’re probably not out there trying to look for other people,” he said.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 5, 2026
They’ll be changing the world while I’ll be wasting time memorizing textbooks and ducking dodgeballs.
From "The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl" by Stacy McAnulty
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
