waste

waste n

1 Waste, desert, badlands, wilderness can mean a tract or region of land not usable for cultivation or general habitation.

Waste is the general term applicable to a tract or region which because of natural features (as poor stony soil, excessive wetness or dryness, or abrupt elevations)

or because of barrenness induced by human agency is unfit or unsuitable for cultivation or human habitation

{

at this . . . point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began— Hardy

}

{

wastes of sand and thorns— Montague

}

Desert tends to stress aridity; it calls to mind arid regions where areas of shifting sand prevail and there is little or no vegetation

{

the Sahara desert

}

but technical use generally applies it to regions that have less than ten inches of annual rainfall or are incapable of supporting a significant population without an artificial water supply.

Badlands applies to a barren waste where soft rocks that suffer from continual erosion prevail and hills are steep, furrowed, and often fantastic in form, drainage is labyrinthine, and watercourses are normally dry

{

there are extensive badlands in southwest South Dakota and northwest Nebraska

}

Wilderness may apply to a waste which human beings find not only incapable of cultivation or habitation but difficult to make their way through for lack of actual or even possible paths or trails, but perhaps more often the term denotes an area or region that has not been extensively occupied or cultivated by man without implying anything about its potential uses

{

oh for a lodge in some vast, wilderness, some boundless contiguity of shade— Cowper

}

{

O my poor kingdom . . . thou wilt be a wilderness again, peopled with wolves— Shak.

}

2 *refuse, rubbish, trash, debris, garbage, offal

waste vb

1 devastate, *ravage, sack, pillage, despoil, spoliate

Analogous words: plunder, loot, *rob, rifle: *destroy, demolish: *ruin, wreck

Antonyms: conserve, save

2 Waste, squander, dissipate, fritter, consume are comparable when they mean to spend or expend freely or futilely.

Waste often implies careless or prodigal expenditure (as of money or of things which cost money) but it may also imply useless or fruitless expenditure (as of time, talent, or energy)

{

allowing no money to be wasted on whims and luxuries— Shaw

}

{

the windows were thickly frosted over, so that Mr. Povey's art in dressing them was quite wasted— Bennett

}

Squander heightens the implications of waste by emphasizing reckless or lavish expenditures that tend to deplete or exhaust; often it suggests impoverishment or complete exhaustion

{

the money, after all, was theirs; seeing it all squandered on a house and a garden, why didn't they rise up . . . ?— Huxley

}

{

willing to squander their lives on the gratuitous work that great art demands— Edmund Wilson

}

{

the most brilliant journalist of my generation . . . often squanders his genius for invective— T. S. Eliot

}

Dissipate, in the specific sense here considered (see also SCATTER), implies loss by extravagance, as if what is expended had been scattered to the four winds; it goes further than waste or squander, which do not, as does dissipate, in themselves imply exhaustion or near exhaustion of the store or stock

{

its endowment dissipated in worthless securities, the institution was closed— Amer. Guide Series: N.C.

}

{

the face of one whose essential innocence could not be dissipated by maturity, even tragedy— Hervey

}

Fritter, usually with away, implies expenditure on trifles or by bits; it usually suggests a gradual disappearance (as of money, of property, or of something of value)

{

the friend had lost $300,000, and Lasker had frittered away almost as much— Cerf

}

{

if we fritter and fumble away our opportunity in needless, senseless quarrels— L. B. Johnson

}

Consume basically stresses a devouring or destroying

{

the house was consumed by fire

}

[(see also EAT, MONOPOLIZE), but it can mean to waste or squander entirely as if by devouring. In this use it is decreasingly frequent with regard to money or property

{

having then consumed all his estate he grew very melancholy— Anthony Wood

}

but in reference to time or energy spent unprofitably, it is not uncommon

{

the day was consumed attending to a multitude of little things

}

{

the heat, the exertion had consumed all superfluous energy— Hervey

}

Analogous words: *spend, expend, disburse: *distribute,% dispense: *scatter, disperse, dispel: *deplete, drain, exhaust, impoverish

Antonyms: save: conserve