Definitions

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

  • noun Loss by deterioration, wear, or destruction.
  • noun The gradual process of wasting.
  • noun An amount that is wasted or lost by wear.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Loss by use, wear, decay, leakage, etc.; waste.

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

  • noun Loss by use, decay, evaporation, leakage, or the like; waste.

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

  • noun uncountable The amount or proportion of something that is wasted or lost by deterioration
  • noun countable Anything lost by wear or waste
  • noun Goods that are damaged, out of date, reduced, or generally unsaleable, which are destined to be thrown away and which are written off as a loss
  • noun In hunting, the act of abandoning animal carcasses or parts; usually illegal

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

  • noun anything lost by wear or waste
  • noun the process of wasting

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

waste + -age

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Examples

  • The term wastage is somewhat misleading, if not erroneous.

    Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot

  • If we were to compare him, to some extent with Tariq Aziz, the Former Iraqi Foreign Minister and the 'public face' of Former Saddam Hussain's Regime, McClellan, does owe the people of the United States and Iraq and the world an explanation as to why he served an Administration which made war on another country, at such a high cost in wastage of human lives, livelihood and national resources.

    Blitzer: Most explosive charges I can remember 2008

  • As we all know, the seat load factor on the Canadian route is, in actual terms, much higher than the average, so this means that most of the wastage is on routes between the UK and the USA.

    Aviation in the Next Decade 1974

  • He sees the wastage from the restaurants and God knows where.

    A World in Violence: Eruption to Hope? 1971

  • Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well.

    Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949

  • And in the case of the latter possibility, or probability, the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet could well compensate for any long-term wastage of the Greenland Ice Sheet that might occur, in terms of how these phenomena impact global sea level.

    New Content on CO2 Science 2008

  • Every -- the -- the -- what they called "wastage" -- that was the word that the British army used, meaning the casualties that occur every day without there being a major engagement going on.

    A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front 2002

  • Due to high media rates, heavy clutter, and difficulty in reaching discrete targets (i.e., unavoidable media "wastage" or "overdelivery"), building equity is expensive.

    Tom Doctoroff: How MNCs Fail in China: Six Common Mistakes 2008

  • The Secretariat is also launching a campaign aimed at persuading all users to reduce any unnecessary "wastage" of power.

    Lloyd Mexico Economic Report - May 2001 2006

  • The Secretariat is also launching a campaign aimed at persuading all users to reduce any unnecessary "wastage" of power.

    Lloyd Mexico Economic Report - May 2001 2006

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