Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To use, consume, spend, or expend thoughtlessly or carelessly.
- intransitive verb To cause to lose energy, strength, or vigor; exhaust, tire, or enfeeble.
- intransitive verb To fail to take advantage of or use for profit; lose.
- intransitive verb To destroy completely.
- intransitive verb Slang To kill; murder.
- intransitive verb To lose energy, strength, weight, or vigor; become weak or enfeebled.
- intransitive verb To pass without being put to use.
- noun The act or an instance of wasting or the condition of being wasted.
- noun A place, region, or land that is uninhabited or uncultivated; a desert or wilderness.
- noun A devastated or destroyed region, town, or building; a ruin.
- noun An unusable or unwanted substance or material, such as a waste product.
- noun Something, such as steam, that escapes without being used.
- noun Garbage; trash.
- noun The undigested residue of food eliminated from the body; excrement.
- adjective Regarded or discarded as worthless or useless.
- adjective Used as a conveyance or container for refuse.
- adjective Excreted from the body.
- idiom (waste (one's) breath) To gain or accomplish nothing by speaking.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In stone-cutting, to take off projecting irregularities of, as in preparing the stone for crating and transportation. Usually with off.
- Desert; desolate; uninhabited.
- In a state of desolation and decay; ruined; ruinous; blank; cheerless; dismal; dreary.
- Unused; untilled; unproductive.
- Rejected as unfit for use, or spoiled in the using; refuse; hence, of little or no value; useless: as, waste paper; waste materials.
- Idle; empty; vain; of no value or significance.
- Exuberant; over-abundant; hence, super-fluous; useless.
- Wasteful; prodigal; profuse.
- noun In physical geography, detritus derived by the superficial disintegration of rock-masses and in process of removal by transporting agencies; rock-waste.
- noun An old spelling of
waist . - To lay waste; devastate; destroy; ruin.
- In law, to damage, injure, or impair, as an estate, voluntarily, or by allowing the build ings, fences, etc., to fail into decay.
- 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.
- To expend without adequate return; spend uselessly, vainly, or foolishly; employ or use lavishly, prodigally, improvidently, or carelessly; squander; throw away.
- Synonyms To ravage, pillage, plunder, strip.
- To dissipate, fritter away.
- To be consumed or grow gradually less in bulk, substance, strength, value, or the like; wear or pine away; decay or diminish gradually; dwindle.
- To cudgel.
- noun A wild, uninhabited, or desolate place or region; a desert; a wilder ness.
- noun Unfilled or uncultivated ground; a tract of land not in a state of cultivation, and producing little or no herbage or wood.
- noun 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.
- noun 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.
- noun Consumption; decline; a pining away.
- noun 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.
- noun Rubbish; trash; nonsense.
- noun A weir or sluice for carrying off the over flow from a dam, reservoir, or canal.
- noun A waste-pipe, or any contrivance for allowing waste matter or surplus water, steam, etc., to escape.
- noun Unnecessary or useless expenditure: as, waste of time, labor, or money.
- noun A superfluity.
- noun 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.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Middle English wasten, from Old North French waster, from Latin vāstāre, to make empty, from vāstus, empty; see euə- in Indo-European roots.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Middle English wasten ("to waste, lay waste"), from Anglo-Norman, Old Northern French waster ("to waste, devastate") (cf. also the variant gaster and French gâter from a related Old French word); the Anglo-Norman form waster was either from Old Frankish *wuastan, *wuostan, *wuostjan (“to lay waste, devastate”), from Proto-Germanic *wōstijanan (“to waste”), from Proto-Indo-European *wāsto- (“empty, wasted”), or alternatively from Latin vastāre, present active infinitive of vastō and influenced by the Frankish; the English word was assisted by similarity to native Middle English westen ("to waste"; > English weest). Cognate with Old High German wuostan, wuastan, wuostjan ("to waste"; > Modern German wüsten), Old English wēstan ("to lay waste, ravage").
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Middle English waste (noun, "a waste"), from Anglo-Norman, Old Northern French wast, waste ("a waste"), from Old Frankish *wuasti, *wuosti (“a waste”) and *wōstin, *wōstinna (“a waste, wasteland, desert”), from Proto-Germanic *wōstī (“a waste”), *wōstinjō (“a waste, wasteland”), from Proto-Indo-European *wāsto- (“empty, wasted”). Cognate with Old High German wuosti, wuasti ("a waste"; > Modern German Wüste), Old High German wuostinna ("a desert, waste"), Old English wēsten ("a waste, wasteland"). Non Germanic cognates include Latin vastus ("waste, desert") and Albanian vjeshtë ("autumn").
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Middle English waste (adjective, "waste"), from Anglo-Norman, Old Northern French wast ("waste"), from Old Frankish *wuasti, *wuosti (“waste, empty”), from Proto-Germanic *wōstijaz (“wasted, abandoned, empty”), from Proto-Indo-European *wāsto- (“empty, wasted”). Cognate with Old High German wuosti, wuasti ("waste, empty"), Old Saxon wōsti ("desolate"), Old English wēste ("waste, barren, desolate, empty").
Examples
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We have the total waste of $225,496,741 and this, reduced to its actual significance, means that of the total actual terminations, 83.6 per cent. was _actual waste_ and only 16.4 per cent. legitimate terminations, while the great bulk of the last item of
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Do you think that over a £billion a year in waste is a good thing in this system?
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OK, if 13% admin waste is not enough to establish my point, then say 40%.
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Growing up, the expression "waste not, want not" was branded into my brain.
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Issa, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been especially critical of what he calls waste in Obama's economic stimulus spending.
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This waste is the same for employer-based health insurance.
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Presumably the cause of this waste is the government's democratic deficit.
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Hopefully marvel does have a problem with this (hopefully it doesnt turn out to be something silly like an actual iron fist (tho i beleive it could work)) instead of ripping off a name why not just do a movie based on the actual character its still cool seems like a waste is all not to
Eli Roth and RZA Teaming for The Man with the Iron Fist « FirstShowing.net
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The disposal of this waste is a big problem and the waste leaves a huge carbon footprint.
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During the decomposition process in the biodigester, the waste is also sterilized.
oroboros commented on the word waste
W - As - Te (tungsten, arsenic, tellurium)
February 2, 2013