WASTE, verb transitive [G., Latin ]

1. To diminish by gradual dissipation or loss. Thus disease wastes the patient; sorrows waste the strength and spirits.

2. To cause to be lost; to destroy by scattering or by injury. Thus cattle waste their fodder when fed in the open field.

3. To expend without necessity or use; to destroy wantonly or luxuriously; to squander; to cause to be lost through wantonness or negligence. Careless people waste their fuel, their food or their property. Children waster their inheritance.

And wasted his substance with riotous living. Luke 15:13.

4. To destroy in enmity; to desolate; as, to waste an enemys country.

5. To suffer to be lost unnecessarily; or to throw away; as, to waste the blood and treasure of a nation.

6. To destroy by violence.

The Tyber insults our walls, and wastes our fruitful grounds.

7. To impair strength gradually.

Now wasting years my former strength confounds.

8. To lose in idleness or misery; to wear out.

Here condemnd to waste eternal days in woe and pain.

9. To spend; to consume.

O were I able to waste it all myself, and leave you none.

10. In law, to damage, impair or injure, as an estate, voluntarily, or by suffering the buildings, fences, etc. To go to decay. See the Noun.

11. To exhaust; to be consumed by time or mortality.

Till your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness. Numbers 14:33.

12. To scatter and lose for want of use or of occupiers.

Full many a flowr is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air.

WASTE, verb intransitive

1. To dwindle; to be diminished; to lose bulk or substance gradually; as, the body wastes in sickness.

The barrel of meal shall not waste 1 Kings 17:14.

2. To be diminished or lost by slow dissipation, consumption or evaporation; as, water wastes by evaporation; fuel wastes in combustion.

3. To be consumed by time or mortality.

Gut man dieth, and wasteth away. Job 14:1.

WASTE, adjective

1. Destroyed; ruined.

The Sophi leaves all waste in his retreat.

2. Desolate; uncultivated; as a waste country; a waste howling wilderness. Deuteronomy 32:10.

3. Destitute; stripped; as lands laid waste

4. Superfluous; lost for want of occupiers.

--And strangled with her waste fertility.

5. Worthless; that which is rejected, or used only for mean purposes; as waste wood.

6. That of which no account is taken, or of which no value is found; as waste paper.

7. Uncultivated; untilled; unproductive.

There is yet much waste land in England.

Laid waste desolated; ruined.

WASTE, noun

1. The act of squandering; the dissipation of property through wantonness, ambition, extravagance, luxury or negligence.

For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood.

2. Consumption; loss; useless expense; any loss or destruction which is neither necessary nor promotive of a good end; a loss for which there is no equivalent; as a waste of goods or money; a waste of time; a waste of labor; a waste of words.

Little wastes in great establishments, constantly occurring, may defeat the energies of a mighty capital.

3. A desolate or uncultivated country. The plains of Arabia are mostly a wide waste

4. Land untilled, though capable of tillage; as the wastes in England.

5. Ground, space or place unoccupied; as the etherial waste

In the dead waste and middle of the night.

6. Region ruined and deserted.

All the leafy nation sinks at last, and Vulcan rides in triumph oer the waste

7. Mischief; destruction.

He will never, I think, in the way of waste attempt us again.

8. In law, spoil, destruction or injury done to houses, woods, fences, lands, etc., by a tenant for life or for years, to the prejudice of the heir, or of him in reversion or remainder. waste is voluntary, as by pulling down buildings; or permissive, as by suffering them to fall for want of necessary repairs. Whatever does a lasting damage to the freehold, is a waste