waste — OET · Shobdo

waste

verb

1 he doesn't like to waste money on bus fares:

squander, fritter away, misspend, misuse, spend recklessly, throw away, lavish, be wasteful with, dissipate, spend like water, throw around like confetti;

go through, run through, exhaust, drain, deplete, burn up, use up, consume;

informal blow, splurge.

▷antonyms conserve.

2 junkies wasting away in the streets:

grow weak, wither, atrophy, become emaciated, shrivel up, shrink, decay;

decline, wilt, fade, flag, deteriorate, degenerate, rot, moulder, languish, be abandoned, be neglected, be forgotten, be disregarded.

▷antonyms flourish, thrive.

3 the disease had wasted his legs:

emaciate, atrophy, wither, debilitate, shrivel, shrink, weaken, enfeeble, sap the strength of.

4 North American, informal I saw them waste the guy I worked for:

murder, kill, do away with, assassinate, liquidate, do to death, eliminate, terminate, dispatch, finish off, put to death, execute;

slaughter, butcher, massacre, wipe out, destroy, annihilate, eradicate, exterminate, extirpate, decimate, mow down, shoot down, cut down, cut to pieces;

informal bump off, polish off, do in, knock off, top, take out, croak, stiff;

North American, informal ice, off, rub out, whack, smoke;

literary slay.

adjective

1 I collected two bags containing waste material:

unwanted, excess, superfluous, left over, scrap, extra, unused, useless, worthless;

unproductive, unusable, unprofitable.

▷antonyms useful.

2 she took a shortcut across waste ground:

uncultivated, barren, desert, unproductive, infertile, unfruitful, arid, bare;

desolate, solitary, lonely, empty, void, uninhabited, unpopulated;

wild.

▷antonyms cultivated.

noun

1 what a waste of money:

squandering, dissipation, frittering away, misspending, misuse, misapplication, misemployment, abuse;

prodigality, extravagance, wastefulness, lavishness, unthriftiness.

2 household waste:

refuse, litter, debris, dross, junk, detritus, scrap;

dregs, leavings, remains, scraps, offscourings;

sewage, effluent, effluvium;

British rubbish;

North American garbage, trash.

3 (usually wastes) the frozen wastes of the South Pole:

desert, wasteland, wilderness, barrenness, emptiness, vastness, wilds.

□ lay waste

the army laid waste to hundreds of villages:

devastate, wipe out, destroy, demolish, annihilate, raze, ruin, leave in ruins, wreck, level, flatten, gut, consume, ravage, pillage, sack, wreak havoc on;

literary despoil;

rare depredate.

waste Oxford Dictionary of English