Wasteful

How to spell wasteful

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wasteful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wasteful mean?

1. adjectiveUsing money, resources, or time carelessly and without good purpose.

Wasteful in a sentence

• Leaving the heating on all day is incredibly wasteful.

• The audit revealed wasteful spending across several departments.

Where does wasteful come from?

Language of origin: French

The base word 'waste' came into English from Anglo-Norman French 'waster' and Old French 'gaster', meaning 'to spoil, ruin, or squander', which in turn drew on the Latin 'vastare' 'to lay waste' and 'vastus' meaning 'empty, desolate, or vast'. That same Latin 'vastus' is the ancestor of the modern word 'vast', so the ideas of emptiness and of squandering both trace back to one root. The adjective 'wasteful' was formed within English by attaching the native Old English suffix '-ful', meaning 'full of' or 'tending towards', to 'waste', a pattern seen in many adjectives like 'careful' and 'hopeful'. By the 1300s and 1400s 'wasteful' was in steady use to describe people or actions that squander resources. A useful spelling reminder is that '-ful' here carries only a single 'l', unlike the standalone word 'full', a quirk shared by every adjective built on this suffix.

How the word is built

• waste (to use carelessly or squander)
• -ful (full of, characterised by)