1. To use, consume, spend, or expend thoughtlessly or carelessly.
2. To cause to lose energy, strength, or vigor; exhaust, tire, or enfeeble: Disease wasted his body.
3. To fail to take advantage of or use for profit; lose: waste an opportunity.
4. 1. To destroy completely.
   2. Slang. To kill; murder.

1. To lose energy, strength, weight, or vigor; become weak or enfeebled: wasting away from an illness.
2. To pass without being put to use: Time is wasting.

1. The act or an instance of wasting or the condition of being wasted: a waste of talent; gone to waste.
2. A place, region, or land that is uninhabited or uncultivated; a desert or wilderness.
3. A devastated or destroyed region, town, or building; a ruin.
4. 1. An unusable or unwanted substance or material, such as a waste product.
   2. Something, such as steam, that escapes without being used.
5. Garbage; trash.
6. The undigested residue of food eliminated from the body; excrement.

1. Regarded or discarded as worthless or useless: waste trimmings.
2. Used as a conveyance or container for refuse: a waste bin.
3. Excreted from the body: waste matter.

waste (one's) breath

1. To gain or accomplish nothing by speaking.

[Middle English wasten, from Old North French waster, from Latin vāstāre, to make empty, from vāstus, empty.]

SYNONYMS   waste, blow, consume, dissipate, fritter, squander. These verbs mean to spend or expend without restraint and often to no avail: wasted my inheritance; blew a fortune at the casino; time and money that was consumed in litigation; dissipated their energies in pointless argument; frittering away her entire allowance; squandered his talent on writing jingles.
ANTONYM¹  save

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.