Search the Dictionary

The second person singular of the verb be, in the indicative mood, imperfect tense; -- now used only in solemn or poetical style. See Was.

Loss by use, decay, evaporation, leakage, or the like; waste.

evastated; stripped; bare; hence, dreary; dismal; gloomy; cheerless. The dismal situation waste and wild. Milton. His heart became appalled as he gazed forward into the waste darkness of futurity. Sir W. Scott.

A basket used in offices, libraries, etc., as a receptacle for waste paper.

See Washboard, 3.

A book in which rough entries of transactions are made, previous to their being carried into the journal.

Full of waste; destructive to property; ruinous; as; wasteful practices or negligence; wasteful expenses.

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.

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

See Forewaste. Gascoigne.

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