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Waster   Listen
noun
Waster  n.  
1.
One who, or that which, wastes; one who squanders; one who consumes or expends extravagantly; a spendthrift; a prodigal. "He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster." "Sconces are great wasters of candles."
2.
An imperfection in the wick of a candle, causing it to waste; called also a thief.
3.
A kind of cudgel; also, a blunt-edged sword used as a foil. "Half a dozen of veneys at wasters with a good fellow for a broken head." "Being unable to wield the intellectual arms of reason, they are fain to betake them unto wasters."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Waster" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Lyric, and he's taking us there," she added. "But, dear," she went on, "you look ever so pale! What is worrying you? I hope you are not fretting over that good-for-nothing waster, Henfrey! Personally, I'm glad to be rid of a fellow who is wanted by the police for a very serious crime. Do brighten up, dear. This is not ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... again sighed the inspector. "He was a clever fellow, finely educated, and kind-hearted at that! And in society, nobody could touch him! But he was a waster, God rest his soul! I was prepared for anything since he refused to live with Olga Petrovna. Poor thing, a good wife, but a sharp tongue! Stephen!" the inspector called to one of his deputies, "go over to my house this minute, and send Andrew to the captain ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... to date, because we want you to carry a living picture of all or any part of the body in your mind as a ready painter carries the picture of the face, scenery, beast or any thing he wishes to represent by his brush. He would only be a waster of time and paint and make a daub that would disgust any one who would employ him. We teach you anatomy in all its branches, that you may be able to have and keep a living picture before your mind all the time, so you can see all joints, ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... many years served as a model of intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua conventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of patent hair-restorers. There are typographical errors in the almanacs published by ...
— Options • O. Henry

... was lashed a goats'-hair rope, which was also made fast to the thrower's arm, carefully coiled, as in a whaling-boat the line is coiled, so that it may run free when the fish is struck. This leister (or waster) was cast by hand at fish lying in not too deep water—generally, in fact, when they were on the spawning beds. It was with this weapon, as one may read in Scrope's Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing, that Tam Purdie—Sir Walter's Purdie—when a young ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... smell of those old books of mine, which from the years and from the ship's hold and from constant companionship with sages and philosophers have acquired a fragrance that exalteth the soul and quickeneth the intellectuals! Let me paraphrase my dear Chaucer and tell thee, thou waster of substances, that ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... Joses was the son of an artist of Portuguese extraction. The artist was a waster and a wanderer. In his youth he mated with a Marseillaise dancing-girl who had posed as his model. Joses had been the result. The father shortly deserted the mother, who took to the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... have," the custodian replied haughtily. "Well, the next day there was a ice-cream man—a reg'lar waster, he was. Stuck outside as if he was froze to the pavement. Kept giving the errand-boys tasters, and when I tried to move him on, he told me not to obstruct his business. Business, indeed! Well, there them boys stuck, one after the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... so excellent a thing as we have made it appear to be, and if the loss thereof be so great a loss, then here you may see who they are that are those extravagant ones; I mean, those that are such in the highest degree. Solomon tells us of 'a great waster,' and saith also, that he that is slothful in his business is brother to such an one (Prov 18:9). Who Solomon had his eye upon, or who it was that he counted so great a waster, I cannot tell; but I will challenge all the world to show me one, that for wasting ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... melting of the snow Divines depart and April comes; Examinations nearer grow After the melting of the snow; The grinder wears a face of woe, The waster smokes and twirls his thumbs; After the melting of the snow ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray

... Diable. Even the mostly blameless hero is allowed, towards the close, to exhibit the well-known ruse or madre characteristics of the French peasant to the extent of more than one not quite white lie; the husband of the heroine is unfaithful, tyrannical as far as he dare be, and a waster of his family's goods before his fortunately rather early death; his pretty young sister, Mariette, is a selfish and spiteful minx; and his paramour (sarcastically named "La Severe") is unchaste, malignant, and dishonest all at ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... never seen such a constitution in a man of my years. Why, almost half my life is yet before me, and we Travers are a long-lived stock. I took care of myself, you see, and I have myself to show for it. I was not a waster. I conserved my heart and my arteries, and yet there are few men who can boast having done as much work as I have done. Look at that hand. Steady, eh? It will be as steady twenty years from now. There is nothing in playing fast ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... had occasional glimpses of a girl who was evidently trying to be an illustrator. Stuart imagined that she was poor and ambitious, and he envied her the zest of her struggle for success. He himself had no such incentives. Poverty was not likely to touch him unless he became a reckless waster, and he fancied that his interests were too far burned to ashes for ambition. It was with another purpose that he forced himself to his task. He was trying to forget dark hair and eyes and the memory of a voice ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... dreadful waster," he admitted. "I've just been reading a penny pamphlet—by one of the labour members, and upon my word, it made me squirm like one o'clock. Did you want to see Sybil about anything of cosmic ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... madam!— The Landgrave Henry, lord and master, Freer than the last, and yet no waster, Who will not stint a poor knave's beer, Or spin out Lent through half the year. Why—I ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... the general quarrel that he's a waster and not justifying his existence. We have had practically nothing to do with each ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... have nothing sufficiently interesting to detain the reader, we pass to one in some degree peculiar to Scotland, which may be called a sort of salmon-hunting. 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. The sport is followed by day and night, but most commonly in the latter, when the fish are discovered by means of torches, or fire-grates, filled with blazing fragments ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... time in all my shameless career. But there is no need to tell you what I am—you told me candidly enough yourself in the old days—it is sufficient to say that it is the same John Locke as then—drunkard and gambler, spendthrift and waster! And I don't think that my worst enemy would have much to add to this record, but then my worst enemy has always been myself. Looking back now over my life—queer what a stimulating effect the certainty of death has to the desire to find even one good action wherewith to appease one's conscience—it ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... hated everything that he had ever heard about him. In the first place, to be an artist was, in the Archdeacon's mind, synonymous with being a loose liver and an atheist. Then this fellow was, as all the town knew, a drunkard, an idler, a dissolute waster who had brought nothing upon Polchester but disgrace. Had Brandon had his way he would, long ago, have had him publicly expelled and forbidden ever to return. The thought that this man should be in the Cathedral at all was shocking to him and, in his present mood, quite intolerable. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... twice a day in a hot anti-septic, but to no purpose, except that the poor thing seemed much comforted by the fomentation. That hen was, Nibletts whispered to me, for fear my aunt should overhear, "a waster." The only thing to do was to coop it up from the rest, or they'd all go down with it—whatever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various

... man, an' don't you be doin' ut,' sez he. Wid that he shows me a Waster action—the breech av her all cut away to show the inside—an' so plazed he was to grumble that he dimonstrated fwhat Hogan had done twice over. 'An' that comes av not knowin' the wepping you're purvided wid,' ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... Margaret's conviction was strengthened later in the day when she came upon him at tea at Mrs. Houghton's. He was holding forth noisily against "society," was denouncing it as a debaucher of manhood and womanhood, a waster of precious time, and on and on in that trite and tedious strain. Margaret's lip curled as she listened. What did this fakir know about manhood and womanhood? And could there be any more pitiful, more paltry wasting of time than in studying out and performing such ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... Crusoe no doubt, living in a serene self- sufficiency and an elysian retirement. Probably he had no responsibilities in the world, with no one to say him nay, himself only to consider in all the universe: a divine conception of adequate life. Yet himself, Charley Steele, an idler, a waster, with no purpose in life, with scarcely the necessity to earn his bread-never, at any rate, until lately—was the slave of the civilisation to which he belonged. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the Jest—the black core of it. All last evening, all through that hilarity he had been plotting this. Plotting it perhaps from the first moment of their meeting. Unable to resist the prompting of the extraordinary likeness, this joker, this waster, done to the world, had left life at the end of a last jamboree, and with a burst of laughter—leaving another man in his clothes, nay, almost one might ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... when that vile Briton (unworthy the name of a Briton), Lord Boston (curse the name!), whose horrid murders stain American soil with blood; perish his name! a fratricide! 'twas he who fir'd Charlestown, and spread desolation, fire, flames and smoke in ev'ry corner—he was the wretch, that waster of the world, that licens'd robber, that blood-stain'd insulter of a free people, who bears the name of Lord Boston, but from henceforth shall be called Cain, that pillag'd the ruins, and dragg'd and murder'd the infant, the aged and infirm—(But ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... added, "the Barbarians know not how to fight and how to die. Fools say it, not we of Plataea. For our first line seemed broken in a twinkling. The Pitanate mora was cut to pieces; Athena Promachus and Ares the City-Waster alone turned back that charge when Mardonius led ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... because I don't rightly know them; but it's bad—something to do with checks that'll put him to hidin' for a long day, if he doesn't want to answer for it in a court o' law. Well, then, the old gentleman being worn out with private care, wishful to retire, and seeing a common cheat and waster in the one who ought by nature to succeed him, has offered me to take over the farm, the trade, an' ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... it well.' Now, then, it is in nature the child should want this handsome stranger; but with me thou wilt certainly say, 'He is not fit for thy happiness; he has not the true faith, he gambles, he fights duels, he is a waster, he lives badly, he will take thee far from thy own people ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... waster, the gambler, the loyal citizen, the slacker, the honest and dishonest—they were all there at the pay window of the Mill. And to each the pay envelope meant a different thing. To big Max the envelope meant an education for his son. To Bill Connley ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... has been spread upon the glen since I looked out last night; for over the same wilderness of snow that has met my gaze for a week, I see the steading of Waster Lunny sunk deeper into the waste. The school-house, I suppose, serves similarly as a snow-mark for the people at the farm. Unless that is Waster Lunny's grieve foddering the cattle in the snow, not a living thing is visible. The ghostlike hills that pen in the glen have ceased to echo to the sharp ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... imagined that he had in his pockets heaps of money to pay for a meal for a handful of people. He was mistaken; that was all, and the incident had no importance, for a few pounds more or less could not matter in the least to a gentleman of his income. Yet he felt guilty of being a waster. He could not accustom himself to the scale of expenditure. Barely in the old days could he have earned in a week the price of the repast consumed now in an hour. The vast apartment was packed with people living at just that rate of expenditure ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... could tell how the doctor, a man whose shoulders often looked as if they had been caught in a shower of tobacco ash, brought me the news to the school-house, and now, when I crossed the fields to dumfounder Waster Lunny with it, I found Birse, the post, reeling off the story to him as fast as a fisher could let out line. I know who was the first woman on the Marywell brae to hear the horn, and how she woke her husband, and who heard ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... Lawrence has published a persuasive little book about it, but I cannot see that he meets the objections to it. These are, the difficulty of valuation, the fact that in many cases it would have to be paid by instalments, and so would be merely another form of income tax, its sparing of the waster and penalising of the saver, and, consequently, the grave danger that it would check accumulation and so dry up the springs of capital. Mr Stilwell has produced a "Great Plan to Pay for the War," by which all the belligerents and neutrals who have been involved in expense ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... Simmons only a day or two ago in the bar of the Rose and Anchor. He—he was also seen prowling round the bank on Tuesday night. So now you know why I was loath to set the ball rolling; old man Patterson would lift the sky to get the chance to have that young waster imprisoned, to say nothing of defaming my personal character at ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various



Words linked to "Waster" :   bad person, ruiner, wrecker, uprooter, wastrel, annihilator, undoer, prodigal, profligate, destroyer



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