WordWeb Online

1. Any general reduction in vitality and strength of body and mind resulting from a debilitating chronic disease
   - cachexia, cachexy
    
2. A decrease in size of an organ caused by disease or disuse
   - atrophy, wasting away

1. Spend thoughtlessly; throw away
   "He wasted his inheritance on his insincere friends";
   - blow [informal], squander
    
2. Use inefficiently or inappropriately
   "waste heat"; "waste a joke on an unappreciative audience"
    
3. Dispose of
   "We waste the dirty water by channeling it into the sewer"
    
4. Run off as waste
   "The water wastes back into the ocean";
   - run off
    
5. Get rid of (someone who may be a threat) by killing
   "the double agent was wasted";
   - neutralize, neutralise [Brit], liquidate, knock off [informal], do in
    
6. Spend extravagantly
   "waste not, want not";
   - consume, squander, ware [archaic]
    
7. Lose vigour, health, or flesh, as through grief
   - pine away, languish
    
8. Cause to grow thin or weak
   "The treatment wasted him";
   - emaciate, macerate
    
9. Cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly
   "The enemy lay waste to the countryside after the invasion";
   - lay waste to, devastate, desolate, ravage, scourge, lay waste
    
10. Become physically weaker
    "Political prisoners are wasting away in many prisons all over the world";
    - rot

1. Second person singular past form of be
   "Neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee"

Derived forms: wastings

Type of: apply, cast aside, cast away, cast out, chuck out, course, debilitate, debility, degenerate, destroy, deteriorate, devolve, discard, dispose, drain, drop, employ, enfeeble, expend, feebleness, feed, fling, flow, frailness, frailty, infirmity, kill, put away, ruin, run, spend, symptom, throw away, throw out, toss, toss away, toss out, use, utilise [Brit], utilize, valetudinarianism, weaken

Antonym: conserve

Encyclopedia: Wasting