Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One that wastes.
  • noun One that lays waste; a destroyer.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A cow or other animal which is wasting away in consequence of tuberculosis.
  • noun A marasmic infant.
  • To waste; squander.
  • noun One who or that which wastes, squanders, or consumes extravagantly or uselessly; a prodigal; a squanderer.
  • noun A lawless, thieving vagabond.
  • noun An excrescence in the snuff of a candle which causes it to waste: otherwise called a thief.
  • noun That which is wasted or spoiled; an article damaged or spoiled in course of making.
  • noun plural Tin-plates (sheet-iron tinned) deficient in weight, or otherwise inferior in quality, and which are sorted out from the “primes.” They are used for various purposes which do not require the best quality of stock.
  • noun A wooden sword formerly used for practice by the common people.
  • noun Same as leister.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who, or that which, wastes; one who squanders; one who consumes or expends extravagantly; a spendthrift; a prodigal.
  • noun An imperfection in the wick of a candle, causing it to waste; -- called also a thief.
  • noun A kind of cudgel; also, a blunt-edged sword used as a foil.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete A kind of cudgel; also, a blunt-edged sword used as a foil.
  • noun Someone or something that wastes; someone who squanders or spends extravagantly.
  • noun dialectal An imperfection in the wick of a candle, causing it to waste.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who dissipates resources self-indulgently
  • noun a person who destroys or ruins or lays waste to

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Origin unknown.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Partly from Anglo-Norman wastere, wastour, partly from waste +‎ -er.

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Examples

  • As a bonus, The Wendell Baker Story, an "amiable time-waster," is reviewed on the same page (dots are connected in the opening paragraphs).

    GreenCine Daily: Fay Grim. 2007

  • This chase, in which the fish is pursued and struck with barbed spears, or a sort of long shafted trident, called a waster, 1is much practised at the mouth of the Esk, and in the other salmon rivers of Scotland.

    Chapter XXVI 1917

  • This chase, in which the fish is pursued and struck with barbed spears, or a sort of long-shafted trident, called a waster, is much practised at the mouth of the Esk and in the other salmon rivers of Scotland.

    Guy Mannering 1815

  • This chase, in which the fish is pursued and struck with barbed spears, or a sort of long-shafted trident, called a waster, is much practised at the mouth of the Esk and in the other salmon rivers of Scotland.

    Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Complete Walter Scott 1801

  • This chase, in which the fish is pursued and struck with barbed spears, or a sort of long-shafted trident, called a waster, is much practised at the mouth of the Esk and in the other salmon rivers of Scotland.

    Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Volume 01 Walter Scott 1801

  • This chase, in which the fish is pursued and struck with barbed spears, or a sort of long-shafted trident, called a waster, is much practised at the mouth of the Esk and in the other salmon rivers of Scotland.

    Guy Mannering — Complete Walter Scott 1801

  • I show how to avoid the biggest time and money-waster, which is not understanding who your platform is for and why - and hopefully save writers from the confusion and inertia that can result from either information overload or not taking the big picture into account before they jump into writing for traditional publication.

    Meryl's Notes at meryl.net by Writer Meryl K. Evans 2009

  • The 'waster' of whom he chants is the slang name borne by the local fast man.

    Robert F. Murray: His Poems with a Memoir Andrew Lang 1878

  • I don't know about everyone else but facebook has become a time waster in the extreme.

    NASA's Dueling In-House Facebooks - NASA Watch 2009

  • I was clicking through Monstropedia (what a fabulous time-waster … umm, I mean research site!) and I came across the entry for succubus: a female demon who seduces men and feeds off their energy when they have sex.

    NZ/Aus Authors: Erica Hayes - Shadowfae Nalini Singh 2009

Comments

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  • A defective glass object discarded during manufacture. Wasters are usually recycled as cullet.

    November 9, 2007