1. To lose, or cause someone to lose, flesh, strength, or vitality through illness or hardship.
2. A large, empty or barren area, especially land with little settlement or growth.
3. Material left over or thrown away because it is no longer wanted or useful.
Use it for
Words that belong together
- a body wasted by disease
- wasting illness
- waste away from hunger
On the page
The fever wasted him until the stairs became an ordeal.
Through that winter she watched him waste, unable to persuade him to eat.
Beyond the ruined station stretched a waste of salt and stone.
The northern wastes offered no shelter from the wind.
Waste from the old mill had stained the creek for years.
Word forms
- Base
- waste
- Past tense
- wasted
- Past participle
- wasted
- Present participle
- wasting
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- waste
- Present continuous
- am/is/are wasting
- Present perfect
- have/has wasted
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been wasting
- Past
- wasted
- Past continuous
- was/were wasting
- Past perfect
- had wasted
- Past perfect continuous
- had been wasting
- Future
- will waste
- Future continuous
- will be wasting
- Future perfect
- will have wasted
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been wasting
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Verb: wastes; wasted; wasted; wasting. Bodily decline may be intransitive or transitive and often takes away, but waste is independently a verb. Noun materials are usually uncountable; barren expanses often plural wastes. Adjectival use has no ordinary comparative. Register: neutral. Commonness: common; bare bodily-decline and desolate-land uses are more literary (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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