1. A failure to use something wisely, properly, fully, or to good effect: The waste of food at the restaurant disturbed Alison because she also worked at a Food Bank.
2. Unwanted or unusable items, remains, or household garbage: There were large bins of waste sitting by the side of the road waiting for the disposal truck to pick them up.
3. Contaminated water from domestic, industrial, or mining applications: The waste which supplied the Native Reserve was contaminated by run off from an adjoining mining project.
4. Rocky areas that are mined for a mineral, or ore, with insufficient mineral content to justify further processing: Jim, the old prospector, mined the waste hoping to recover particles of gold.
5. A place or region that has been destroyed or ruined: The city and surrounding suburbs were nothing but waste after the destruction by the bombings of the invaders.

1. To use, to consume, or to expend thoughtlessly or carelessly: Roberta's mother was always cautioning her not to waste food, reminding her daughter about hungry children in other parts of the world.
2. To cause someone to lose energy, strength, or vigor; to exhaust, tire, or enfeeble: The disease that Jim had significantly wasted his body to a deplorable condition.
3. To fail to take advantage of or to use for profit; to lose: It would be a shame to waste an opportunity to go to the Canadian islands for the holidays.
4. Slang: To kill, murder or to destroy completely: The gang leader, Dudley, threatened to waste the other gang if they did not stop stealing cars in his neighborhood.
5. Etymology: from Latin vastare, "to lay waste" from vastus, "empty, desolate, waste" then "devastate, ravage, ruin", from Anglo-French and Old Norse French waster, "to spoil, to ruin" (Old French guaster), altered by the influence of Frankish wostjan.

Unused water that returns as vapor to the atmosphere before it has been incorporated into an eco-system where it provides benefits for living creatures and plants: Dwight and other climatologists studied the cycle and patterns of consumptive waste, comparing rural and urban water supplies.

A constructive, or contractor, term for two or more fixtures that use a single continuous line as the waste line or the area below the point where the fixture drains into the pipe is the waste line: When designing and building the new home, the architects and contractors were careful to include a system for continuous waste that would drain properly.

Any broken or unwanted electrical or electronic appliances which have become items of concern because of the components are considered toxic and are not biodegradable: The city where Sally lives recently started a recycling program for electronic wastes of cell phones and computers.

Any of the various categories of disposable matter that is generated by manufacturing or commercial processes and which usually indicates some kind of hazardous or toxic materials: The city established a working group to monitor the industrial waste of the company that produced plastic films which was located near the river.