1. Severe wasting of the body due to chronic illness
   "The cancer patient's wasting was evident in his dramatic weight loss";
   - cachexia, cachexy
    
2. A decrease in size of an organ caused by disease or disuse
   "The patient's muscle wasting away was a result of prolonged bed rest";
   - 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. Spend extravagantly
   "waste not, want not";
   - consume, squander, ware [archaic]
    
4. Deliberately discard or dispose of
   "We waste the dirty water by channeling it into the sewer"; "The factory wasted the damaged stock"
    
5. Run off as waste
   "The water wastes back into the ocean";
   - run off
    
6. Cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly
   "The enemy lay waste to the countryside after the invasion";
   - lay waste to, devastate, desolate, ravage, lay waste
    
7. Lose vigour, health, or flesh, as through grief
   "She wasted away after the loss of her spouse";
   - pine away, languish [archaic]
    
8. Cause to grow thin or weak
   "The treatment wasted him";
   - emaciate, macerate
    
9. Become physically weaker
   "Political prisoners are wasting away in many prisons all over the world";
   - rot
    
10. [informal] 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 [informal], clip [informal], whack [informal], take out [informal]

1. Second person singular past form of 'be'
   "Thou wast there when it happened"

Derived forms: wastings

See also: bump off [informal], croak [informal], despatch [Brit], dispatch, murder, off [N. Amer, informal], polish off [informal], slay [literary]

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

Encyclopedia: Wasting