squander

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (5)  · 
“
That said, I very much appreciate Mr. Limbaugh's continuing efforts to confuse, squander, and divide his own party.

View all »
Definitions (14)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. transitive verb To spend wastefully or extravagantly; dissipate. See Synonyms at waste.
  2. transitive verb To fail to take advantage of; lose a chance for: squandered an opportunity to go to college.
  3. transitive verb Obsolete To scatter.
1 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (5)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • And then, instead of bringing your expertise—which this family paid for—home where you could do some good, you chose to squander it in California I thought the word 'squander' went out with the missionaries. —  Muller, Marcia - [22] A Walk through the fire.htm
  • The sarcophagus spelled winters ahead, springs to squander, autumns to spend with all the golden and rusty and copper leaves like coins, and over all, her bright sun symbol, daughter-of-Ra eternal face, forever above our horizon, forever an illumination to tilt our shadows to better ends. —  I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC! - Ray Bradbury
  • Obama's mandate is his to deploy or squander, and the speed with which he has lost control of the storyline on stimulus suggests that he has miscalculated in figuring how much magnanimity that mandate affords him. —  1115.org
  • Because, without us (the Good People), injury victims "squander" their personal injury settlements. —  Beyond Structured Settlements
  • Like FTUD says: taxpayers give the billions away, only to have the company squander or file bankruptcy.
More examples »
 

Tags

squander hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 146 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

Used in the same contextWord Family

squander:   squandering ·  squandered
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Origin unknown.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Not found in early use; perhaps a dial. form, a variant, with the common dial. change of initial sw- to squ-, of *swander, which is perhaps a nasalized form of swadder, orig. scatter as water (?) (cf. Middle Dutch swadderen, dabble in water, = Swedish dial. skvadra, gush out, as water), itself a variant of English dial. swatter, Scots squatter, throw (water) about, scatter, squander, from Swedish dial. squättra, squander; freq. of English dial. swat, variant squat, throw down forcibly; cf. Icelandic skvetta = Swedish sqvätta, throw out, squirt, = Danish skvatte, squirt, splash, squander: see squat, squatter, swat, swatter. The word may owe its nasalization to Anglo-Saxon swindan (preterit swand), vanish, waste, Old High German swantian, German ver-schwenden, squander, etc.
  2. from squander, v.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈskwɑndər/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a month.

Recently looked up

linguist · promotional · catbird · gosling · two-speed

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Der dicke Dachdecker deckte dir dein Dach, drum dank dem dicken Dachdecker, dass der dicke Dachdecker dir dein Dach deckte. · weitläufig · und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute · redescheu · selbstverständlich