Wasty

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Tending to squander resources or money carelessly ; describing a place that is barren, empty, or ruined
2. Given to spending or using things needlessly ; referring to land that lies barren, desolate, and uninhabited
3. Characterized by careless excess in using things ; pertaining to a region left empty, ruined, and desolate

Etymology: "Wasty" is an English adjective built from "waste" plus the suffix "-y", meaning "waste-like" or "desolate." Its ancestor in Old English, "wēstiġ," described land that was empty, uninhabited, or barren, and the same word family spread across the Germanic languages: Scots has "wasty" and "waisty," Dutch has "woestig" (inhospitable, rugged, wild), and Low German has "wööstig" (desolate). The word carries a second, quite different sense in Middle English. Alongside the idea of desolation, "wasty" was used to mean "extravagantly or wastefully expensive," a meaning that grew naturally from the same root, since "waste" also meant squandering. Here the same suffix turns the notion of wasting into a description of something costly and lavish, rather than something empty and barren.