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.

  • 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.
  • Laying waste; devastating; despoiling.
  • Gradually reducing the bodily plumpness and strength; enfeebling; emaciating: as, a wasting disease.

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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