wasting

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
waste/weɪst/

▶verb

• 1 use carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.

  ■ (usu. be wasted on) expend on an unappreciative recipient: small talk was wasted on him.

  ■ fail to make full or good use of.

• 2 (often waste away) become progressively weaker and more emaciated.

• 3 literary lay waste to.

• 4 N. Amer. informal kill or severely injure.

• 5 (as adj. wasted) informal under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs.

• 6 literary (of time) pass away.

▶adjective

• 1 eliminated or discarded as no longer useful or required.

• 2 (of an area of land, typically an urban one) not used, cultivated, or built on.

▶noun

• 1 an act or instance of wasting.

• 2 unusable or unwanted material.

• 3 a large area of barren, typically uninhabited land.

• 4 Law damage to an estate caused by an act or by neglect, especially by a life tenant.

– phrases
go to waste be wasted.
lay waste to (or lay something (to) waste) completely destroy.
waste of space informal a person perceived as useless.

– origin ME: from Old North. Fr. wast(e) (n.), waster (v.), based on L. vastus ‘unoccupied, uncultivated’.