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A kind of white and fine bread or cake; -- called also wastel bread, and wastel cake. [Obs.] Roasted flesh or milk and wasted bread. Chaucer. The simnel bread and wastel cakes, which were only used at the tables of the highest nobility. Sir W. Scott.

The quality or state of being waste; a desolate state or condition; desolation. A day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness. Zeph. i. 15.

One who, or that which, wastes; one who squanders; one who consumes or expends extravagantly; a spendthrift; a prodigal. He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster. Prov. xviii. 9. Sconces are great wasters of candles. Swift.

A spendthrift. [Obs.]

An overfall, or weir, for the escape, or overflow, of superfluous water from a canal, reservoir, pond, or the like.

Causing waste; also, undergoing waste; diminishing; as, a wasting disease; a wasting fortune. Wasting palsy (Med.), progressive muscular atrophy. See under Progressive.

A waster; a thief. [Obs. or R.] [Written also wastour.] Chaucer. Southey.

See Wastrel. [Obs.]

Any waste thing or substance; as:

Waste material from the manufacture of alkali; specif., soda waste.

Washed by the waves or tide; -- said of a rock or strip of shore, or (Naut.) of an anchor, etc., when flush with the surface of the water, so that the waves break over it.

To clean the oil from (wood) after combing.

To drench or souse with water. "Let the maids bewash the men." Herrick.

A wash that blackens, as opposed to whitewash; hence, figuratively, calumny. To remove as far as he can the modern layers of black wash, and let the man himself, fair or foul, be seen. C. Kingsley.

The outlet from a dam or reservoir; also, a cut to divert the flow of water.

One who consumes candles by being up late for study or dissipation. A bookworm, a candlewaster. B. Jonson.

One who, or that which, washes dishes.

See Eyewater.

See Forewaste. Gascoigne.

To desolate or lay waste utterly. [Obs.] Spenser.