waste
Americanverb (used with object)
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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.
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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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to be consumed, spent, or employed uselessly or without giving full value or being fully utilized or appreciated.
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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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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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(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.
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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.
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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
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informal (tr) to murder or kill
I want that guy wasted by tomorrow
noun
-
the act of wasting or state of being wasted
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a failure to take advantage of something
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anything unused or not used to full advantage
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anything or anyone rejected as useless, worthless, or in excess of what is required
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garbage, rubbish, or trash
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a land or region that is devastated or ruined
-
a land or region that is wild or uncultivated
-
physiol
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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
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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
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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
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An unusable or unwanted substance or material, such as a waste product.
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See also hazardous waste landfill
Synonym Usage
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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wastesimple
-
wastessimple
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have wastedperfect
-
has wastedperfect
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am wastingprogressive
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are wastingprogressive
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is wastingprogressive
-
have been wastingperfect progressive
-
has been wastingperfect progressive
Past
-
wastedsimple
-
had wastedperfect
-
was wastingprogressive
-
were wastingprogressive
-
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:
The company said earlier it would abide by an order from Mayor Bass to remove the waste within 45 days and has weeks to go.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
Retreats are often seen as a waste of time and money or, worse, an HR violation waiting to happen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
Defensive stocks seem like a waste of time.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 22, 2026
Correction: The earlier figure in this story has been amended to 10 million because only the firm's water supply customers, and not waste water customers, are affected.
From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2026
Do I waste my time on a could be?
From "Wayward Creatures" by Dayna Lorentz
It does point out that “very little is known about the history of this deep-ocean disposal, the nature of the wastes, or waste sources.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2026
Best of all, Wilde wastes no time getting right down to it.
From Salon ● Jul. 5, 2026
This process wastes energy as heat within the motor core, which is made from soft magnetic materials.
From Science Daily ● May 18, 2026
Aspiring to anything more, in Simon’s view, simply wastes time and energy, and in his book he explores this concept by applying it to himself.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 11, 2026
“Your spirit indeed is strong, but your body wastes away. Why do you not eat?”
From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein
When they took the stage, the band wasted no time exploding into a searing 10-song set led by “That Girl” and including a screeching cover of the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
It was a massive wasted opportunity for a gifted generation of Senegal players.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
The letter ensures that "time isn't wasted in a place where there is no expectation of recovering people alive," he told AFP.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
Tens of billions of dollars were wasted on Neom, where the kingdom began work on a planned futuristic city of nine million people.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
My wasted voice, my ancient heart, could only handle so much.
From "Not Nothing" by Gayle Forman
“Anticompetitive practices are strong-arming our cities, wasting taxpayer dollars, and leaving firefighters without lifesaving equipment,” Banks said separately.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026
The Dodgers’ problems were compounded by Alex Call wasting the team’s two challenges in his at-bat in the first inning when the team had already taken the lead.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
I mentioned this trick in my treatise on not wasting pickle juice, and the same logic applies here.
From Salon ● Jul. 7, 2026
"Iran is wasting no time getting its tankers back into circulation," said Bockman.
From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2026
“If you hadn’t tried to jump, one or all of us might have been crushed by the asphalt that got me. We were wasting time talking. You got us moving.”
From "Storm Runners" by Roland Smith
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.
