Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Gradually deteriorating; declining.
  • adjective Sapping the strength, energy, or substance of the body; emaciating.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Laying waste; devastating; despoiling.
  • Gradually reducing the bodily plumpness and strength; enfeebling; emaciating: as, a wasting disease.
  • noun In medicine, atrophy.
  • noun In stone-cutting, the process or operation of chipping off fragments from a block of stone with a pick or point, for the purpose of reducing the faces to an approximately plane surface. Stone so worked is said to be wasted off. Compare clowring.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Causing waste; also, undergoing waste; diminishing
  • adjective (Med.) progressive muscular atrophy. See under Progressive.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Referring to something that cause a waste, particularly a wasting disease which causes pronounced loss of body mass.
  • verb Present participle of waste.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a decrease in size of an organ caused by disease or disuse
  • noun any general reduction in vitality and strength of body and mind resulting from a debilitating chronic disease

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