Wasted

ppl. a. [f. WASTE v. + -ED¹.]

  1.  Laid waste, devastated, ravaged, ruined.

c. 1440.  Promp. Parv., 517/2. Wastyd, vastatus.

1500–20.  Dunbar, Poems, xiv. 29. Sa mony waistit wawis.

1587.  in Border Papers (1894), I. 259. This ruinose and waysted cuntre.

1588.  Shaks., Tit. A., V. i. 23. As I earnestly did fixe mine eye Upon the wasted building.

1671.  Milton, P. R., III. 102. If young African for fame His wasted Country freed from Punic rage.

1697.  Dryden, Virg. Georg., I. 689. Perfidious Mars … o’er the wasted World in Triumph rides.

1813.  Scott, Trierm., III. i. Of wasted fields and plundered flocks The Borderers bootless may complain.

1855.  Macaulay, Hist. Eng., xx. IV. 514. The sufferings of the thrice wasted Palatinate.

1871.  Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), IV. xviii. 197. Destroyed or wasted houses.

  2.  Diminished or reduced in substance, bulk, strength, health, etc.; worn, decayed.

1508.  Dunbar, Tua Mariit Wemen, 90. A waistit wolroun.

1561.  T. Norton, Calvin’s Inst., II. 112. Neither may we pretend this excuse that we want power, and like wasted detters be not able to pay.

1590.  Shaks., Mids. N., V. i. 382. Now the wasted brands doe glow.

1653.  Waterhouse, Apol. Learn., 74. No more then it follows that a wasted man must get a child unhail, because he himself is consumptive.

1709.  T. Robinson, Nat. Hist. Westmorld. & Cumbld., vii. 47. Laid to Fallow, that it may … recover its wasted Strength.

1785.  Cowper, Task, I. 128. Youth repairs His wasted spirits quickly.

1849.  C. Brontë, Shirley, xi. Keeping her pale face and wasted figure as much out of sight as she could.

1867.  Morris, Jason, I. 372. And the thin, wasted, shining summer rills Grew joyful with the coming of the rain.

1883.  D. C. Murray, Hearts, xv. ‘You are better, Moore?’ Tom asked…. ‘No,’ said the farmer in a wasted voice.

1919.  Alan Bott, in Blackw. Mag., Aug., 166. Ribs and bones showed through their wasted bodies, which were indescribably thin.

  † b.  Morally marred or defiled. Obs.

1483.  Caxton, Golden Leg., 188/b 2. Thou comest … whyche arte pure and clene to be baptysed and wasshen of me that am foule and wasted.

  3.  Spent, put forth, bestowed, used, unprofitably; squandered; misused; ‘thrown away.’

1741.  Watts, Improv. Mind, I. xx. § 12. But let them take great care lest they intrench upon more necessary employments, and so fall under the charge and censure of wasted time.

1781.  Cowper, Conversation, 357. Our wasted oil unprofitably burns. Ibid. (1785), Task, IV. 225. A world … most pleas’d when idle most; Whose only happy are their wasted hours.

1883.  Whitelaw, Sophocles, Oedipus King, 365. Say what thou wilt: ’twill be but wasted breath.

1894.  Lady M. Verney, Verney Mem., III. 352. His blighted hopes and wasted opportunities.

  4.  Of time: Gone by, elapsed.

c. 1600.  Shaks., Sonn., cvi. When in the Chronicle of wasted time, I see discriptions of the fairest wights.

1781.  Cowper, Retirement, 13. The remnant of his wasted span.