Dictionary

wasteness en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈweɪstnəs/ (UK)

Etymology

From Middle English wastnesse; equivalent to waste + -ness. Cognate with West Frisian woestens (“wildness, savagery, fierceness”), Dutch woestenis (“wasteland”), German Wüstnis (“desert, wasteland”).

Meanings

1. (countable, obsolete, uncountable) The state of being laid waste; desolation.
   • That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Zephaniah 1:15:
2. (archaic, countable, uncountable) The state of being uncultivated; wild, barren.
   • Under her rays, the ground over which we passed assumed a more interesting appearance than during the broad day-light, which discovered the extent of its wasteness. 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter I, in Rob Roy. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 3:
   • […] I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the foot of the old tower of Calais church. The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea grasses […] 1856, John Ruskin, “Of Mountain Beauty”, in Modern Painters […], volume IV, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, , § 2:
3. (countable, obsolete, uncountable) A wilderness.
   • She of nought affrayd, / Through woods and wastnesse wide him daily sought 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

Forms