waste

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To use, consume, spend, or expend thoughtlessly or carelessly.
2. v. To cause to lose energy, strength, or vigor; exhaust, tire, or enfeeble: Disease wasted his body.
3. v. To fail to take advantage of or use for profit; lose: waste an opportunity.
4. v. To destroy completely.
5. v. Slang To kill; murder.
6. v. To lose energy, strength, weight, or vigor; become weak or enfeebled: wasting away from an illness.
7. v. To pass without being put to use: Time is wasting.
8. n. The act or an instance of wasting or the condition of being wasted: a waste of talent; gone to waste.
9. n. A place, region, or land that is uninhabited or uncultivated; a desert or wilderness.
10. n. A devastated or destroyed region, town, or building; a ruin.
11. n. An unusable or unwanted substance or material, such as a waste product.
12. n. Something, such as steam, that escapes without being used.
13. n. Garbage; trash.
14. n. The undigested residue of food eliminated from the body; excrement.
15. adj. Regarded or discarded as worthless or useless: waste trimmings.
16. adj. Used as a conveyance or container for refuse: a waste bin.
17. adj. Excreted from the body: waste matter.
18. idiom. waste (one's) breath To gain or accomplish nothing by speaking.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In physical geography, detritus derived by the superficial disintegration of rock-masses and in process of removal by transporting agencies; rock-waste.
2. In stone-cutting, to take off projecting irregularities of, as in preparing the stone for crating and transportation. Usually with off.
3. Desert; desolate; uninhabited.
4. In a state of desolation and decay; ruined; ruinous; blank; cheerless; dismal; dreary.
5. Unused; untilled; unproductive.
6. Rejected as unfit for use, or spoiled in the using; refuse; hence, of little or no value; useless: as, waste paper; waste materials.
7. Idle; empty; vain; of no value or significance.
8. Exuberant; over-abundant; hence, super-fluous; useless.
9. Wasteful; prodigal; profuse.
10. n. A wild, uninhabited, or desolate place or region; a desert; a wilder ness.
11. n. Unfilled or uncultivated ground; a tract of land not in a state of cultivation, and producing little or no herbage or wood.
12. n. In coal-mining, gob; also, the fine coal made in mining and preparing coal for the market; culm; coal-dirt; dirt: in the Pennsylvania an thracite region, used to signify both the mine-waste (or coal left in the mine in pillars, etc.) and the breaker waste.
13. n. Gradual loss, diminution, or decay, as in bulk, substance, strength, or value, from continued use, wear, disease, etc.: as, waste of tissue; waste of energy.
14. n. Consumption; decline; a pining away.
15. n. Broken, spoiled, useless, or superfluous material; stuff that is left over, or that is unfitted or cannot readily be utilized for the purpose for which it was intended; overplus, useless, or rejected material; refuse, as the overflow water from a dam or reservoir, broken or spoiled castings in a foundry, paper scraps in a printing-office or bindery, or shreds of yarn in a cotton- or woolen-mill.
16. n. Rubbish; trash; nonsense.
17. n. A weir or sluice for carrying off the over flow from a dam, reservoir, or canal.
18. n. A waste-pipe, or any contrivance for allowing waste matter or surplus water, steam, etc., to escape.
19. n. Unnecessary or useless expenditure: as, waste of time, labor, or money.
20. n. A superfluity.
21. n. In law, anything suffered by a tenant in the nature of permanent injury to the inheritance, not occasioned by the act of God or a public enemy; the result of any act or omission by the tenant of a particular estate by which the estate of the remainder-man or reversioner is rendered less valuable.
22. n. Synonyms Refuse, Damage, etc. See loss.
23. To lay waste; devastate; destroy; ruin.
24. In law, to damage, injure, or impair, as an estate, voluntarily, or by allowing the build ings, fences, etc., to fail into decay.
25. To diminish or reduce in bulk, substance, strength, value, or the like, as by continued use, wear, loss, decay, or disease; consume or wear away; use up; spend.
26. To expend without adequate return; spend uselessly, vainly, or foolishly; employ or use lavishly, prodigally, improvidently, or carelessly; squander; throw away.
27. Synonyms To ravage, pillage, plunder, strip.
28. To dissipate, fritter away.
29. To be consumed or grow gradually less in bulk, substance, strength, value, or the like; wear or pine away; decay or diminish gradually; dwindle.
30. n. An old spelling of waist.
31. To cudgel.

Wiktionary

1. n. A waste land; an uninhabited desolate region; a wilderness or desert.
2. n. A place that has been laid waste or destroyed.
3. n. A large tract of uncultivated land.
4. n. A vast expanse of water.
5. n. A disused mine or part of one.
6. n. The action or progress of wasting; extravagant consumption or ineffectual use.
7. n. Large abundance of something, specifically without it being used.
8. n. Gradual loss or decay.
9. n. A decaying of the body by disease; wasting away.
10. n. rare Destruction or devastation caused by war or natural disasters; See "to lay waste"
11. n. Excess of material, useless by-products or damaged, unsaleable products; garbage; rubbish.
12. n. Excrement
13. n. law A cause of action which may be brought by the owner of a future interest in property against the current owner of that property to prevent the current owner from degrading the value or character of the property, either intentionally or through neglect.
14. adj. Uncultivated, uninhabited.
15. adj. Barren; desert.
16. adj. Rejected as being defective; eliminated as being worthless; produced in excess.
17. adj. Superfluous; needless.
18. adj. Unfortunate; Disappointing.
19. v. transitive To devastate or destroy.
20. v. transitive To squander (money or resources) uselessly; to spend (time) idly.
21. v. transitive, slang To kill; to murder.
22. v. intransitive Gradually lose weight, weaken, become frail.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Desolate; devastated; stripped; bare; hence, dreary; dismal; gloomy; cheerless.
2. adj. Lying unused; unproductive; worthless; valueless; refuse; rejected.
3. adj. Lost for want of occupiers or use; superfluous.
4. v. To bring to ruin; to devastate; to desolate; to destroy.
5. v. To wear away by degrees; to impair gradually; to diminish by constant loss; to use up; to consume; to spend; to wear out.
6. v. To spend unnecessarily or carelessly; to employ prodigally; to expend without valuable result; to apply to useless purposes; to lavish vainly; to squander; to cause to be lost; to destroy by scattering or injury.
7. v. (Law) To damage, impair, or injure, as an estate, voluntarily, or by suffering the buildings, fences, etc., to go to decay.
8. v. To be diminished; to lose bulk, substance, strength, value, or the like, gradually; to be consumed; to dwindle; to grow less; -- commonly used with away.
9. v. (Sporting) To procure or sustain a reduction of flesh; -- said of a jockey in preparation for a race, etc.
10. n. The act of wasting, or the state of being wasted; a squandering; needless destruction; useless consumption or expenditure; devastation; loss without equivalent gain; gradual loss or decrease, by use, wear, or decay.
11. n. That which is wasted or desolate; a devastated, uncultivated, or wild country; a deserted region; an unoccupied or unemployed space; a dreary void; a desert; a wilderness.
12. n. That which is of no value; worthless remnants; refuse. Specifically: Remnants of cops, or other refuse resulting from the working of cotton, wool, hemp, and the like, used for wiping machinery, absorbing oil in the axle boxes of railway cars, etc.
13. n. (Law) Spoil, destruction, or injury, done to houses, woods, fences, lands, etc., by a tenant for life or for years, to the prejudice of the heir, or of him in reversion or remainder.
14. n. (Mining) Old or abandoned workings, whether left as vacant space or filled with refuse.
15. n. (Phys. Geog.) Material derived by mechanical and chemical erosion from the land, carried by streams to the sea.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. lose vigor, health, or flesh, as through grief
2. n. an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation
3. n. (law) reduction in the value of an estate caused by act or neglect
4. n. the trait of wasting resources
5. v. cause to grow thin or weak
6. n. useless or profitless activity; using or expending or consuming thoughtlessly or carelessly
7. adj. located in a dismal or remote area; desolate.
8. v. spend thoughtlessly; throw away
9. v. get rid of (someone who may be a threat) by killing
10. v. run off as waste
11. v. get rid of
12. n. any materials unused and rejected as worthless or unwanted
13. v. spend extravagantly
14. v. use inefficiently or inappropriately
15. v. become physically weaker
16. v. cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly