# waste

Pronunciation: say "WAYST" /weɪst/

## Verb

1. To spend money, resources, or time uselessly or without good result; to squander.
   - Simple: To use money, time, or things in a careless way that gives no good result.
   - _She wasted her savings on a scheme that collapsed within months._
   - _Companies that waste valuable resources rarely survive for long._
6. To become, or make something, gradually thinner, weaker or smaller, especially the body through illness or hunger, as in 'waste away'.
   - Simple: To slowly become thinner and weaker, often from illness, or to make something do this.
   - _Stranded on the ice with dwindling supplies, the explorers began to waste away as the weeks dragged on._
   - _The long illness had wasted her muscles so badly that she needed months of therapy to walk again._
8. To kill or murder someone, especially deliberately and violently. *(slang)*
   - Simple: To kill someone, especially in a violent way.
   - _He bragged that he'd waste the informant before sunrise._
   - _The hitman wasted his target and vanished before dawn._
9. To devastate or destroy something completely, especially to ravage land, towns, or settlements.
   - Simple: To completely destroy a place, often a town or land, in war or attack.
   - _The raiders wasted the coastal towns and carried off the harvest._
   - _A single campaign could waste an entire province within months._

## Noun

2. Material left over as excess, useless by-products, or damaged goods that cannot be sold; garbage.
   - Simple: Things that are thrown away because they are no longer wanted or useful.
   - _The recycling plant separates plastic waste from scrap metal._
   - _Reducing food waste has become a priority for many restaurants._
3. The act or process of wasting; extravagant consumption or ineffective use of something.
   - Simple: The act of using something in a careless way, so that much of it is lost.
   - _The committee condemned the waste of public money on the failed project._
   - _Leaving every light on all night is sheer waste._
4. A polite term for bodily excrement or urine; the matter the body eliminates.
   - Simple: A polite word for the solid and liquid that the body passes out.
   - _The treatment plant processes human waste from the entire city._
   - _Hikers are asked to bury their waste at least two hundred feet from any stream or trail._
7. A gradual loss, decay or wearing away of something, especially of the body and its tissues through disease.
   - Simple: A slow loss or wearing away of something, especially of the body from illness.
10. A large, empty, desolate area of land or water, such as a desert, icy wilderness or open ocean.
   - Simple: A huge, empty, lonely area of wild land or sea where few or no people live.
   - _The explorers vanished somewhere in the polar waste._
   - _A cold wind swept across the trackless waste._
13. Destruction caused by war or disaster, or an area left in ruins by it.
   - Simple: Ruin caused by war or disaster, or a place that has been destroyed.
   - _Survivors picked their way through the bombed-out waste of the old quarter._
   - _The eruption turned a thriving valley into a lifeless waste._
14. A large abundance of something that goes unused; a wealth or expanse left untapped.
   - Simple: A huge amount of something that is there but never gets used.
15. On a manor, the open, uncultivated land outside the farmed fields, over which tenants often held rights such as grazing animals or cutting turf.
   - Simple: Land on a manor that was not farmed, where tenants often had rights to graze animals or cut turf.
   - _Commoners had ancient rights to cut turf from the manorial waste._
   - _Much of the parish was once waste, open to all the tenants._

## Adjective

5. Discarded as useless, or produced or done in excess of what is needed.
   - Simple: Thrown away as useless, or more than is needed.
   - _Factories must treat waste water before releasing it into rivers._
   - _Waste materials from the mill are sorted and sent for reuse._
11. Barren, desolate, and empty; left uncultivated or uninhabited.
   - Simple: Empty and bare, with little or nothing growing or living there.
   - _The pioneers claimed several acres of waste land along the ridge._
   - _A few sheep wandered across the waste moor._
12. Useless, rubbish, or disappointing. *(slang)*
   - Simple: Rubbish, useless, or disappointing.
   - _The whole event was waste, a complete letdown from start to finish._
   - _He talked big all week, then didn't even show up. He's so waste._

## Other meanings

- (adjective) Gloomy and cheerless in mood or appearance.
- (noun) In property law, a legal claim brought against the current holder of land for damaging it, harming the interest of someone who will own it in the future.
- (verb) To damage or impair an estate one holds, either deliberately or by letting its buildings and fences fall into decay.
- (noun) Eroded rock and soil material carried from the land by streams down to the sea.
- (noun) A worked-out or abandoned section of a mine.

## Origin

**Meanings 2–4, 7, 10, 12–15** — Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- ("empty, wasted") lies behind the Proto-Germanic forms that produced Frankish *wōstī. This passed into Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French as wast, waste ("a waste") and then into Middle English as waste.
**Meanings 5, 11** — The adjective goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- ("empty, wasted"), through Frankish *wōstī ("waste, empty") and Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French wast ("waste"), to Middle English waste. Old High German wuosti, German wüst, and Old English wēste ("barren, desolate, empty") are related.
**Meanings 1, 6, 8–9** — From Middle English wasten ("to waste, lay waste"), from Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French waster ("to waste, devastate"). The form waster came either from Frankish *wōstijan or from Latin vastāre influenced by the Frankish word, and was reinforced by the similar native Middle English westen. It is related to Old High German wuostan and Old English wēstan ("to lay waste, ravage").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/waste (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).