fritter away

Verb

fritter away (third-person singular simple present fritters away, present participle frittering away, simple past and past participle frittered away)

1. (transitive) To squander or waste.
   • Keep frittering money and resources away on such media for as long as you live or want.
   • What the school books say about the united efforts of the two great Rossums is all a fairy tale. They used to have dreadful rows. The old atheist hadn't the slightest conception of industrial matters, and the end of it was that young Rossum shut him up in some laboratory or other and let him...c. 1921 (date written), Karel Čapek, translated by Paul Selver, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots): A Fantastic Melodrama […], Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1923, →OCLC, Act...

   Synonyms:

   piss away, fribble

2. (transitive) To decrease in an incremental way without hindrance.
   • “There is little need,” said the monk, with a meaning look, “to fritter away the time in gewgaws.”1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, “In which the Occurrence of the Accident mentioned in the last Chapter, affords an opportunity to a couple of Gentlemen to tell Stories against each...
   • I had been frittering away my money, too, on luxuries; and luxuries are effeminate.1890, J[ames] M[atthew] Barrie, “My Pipes”, in My Lady Nicotine: A Study in Smoke, Boston, Mass.: Joseph Knight Company, published 1896, →OCLC, page 35