Word.ws English Dictionary

go to waste

go to waste verb: to remain unused; not to fulfill its purpose.

Verb

go to waste (third-person singular simple present goes to waste, present participle going to waste, simple past went to waste, past participle gone to waste)

  1. To remain unused; not to fulfill its purpose.
    • Every year it is painfully apparent that fully two-thirds of our fruits and tons of vegetables go to waste.1912, George Washington Carver, The Canning and Preserving of Fruits and Vegetables in the Home

Forms of go to waste

third-person singular presentgoes to waste
present participlegoing to waste
pastwent to waste
past participlegone to waste

Questions about go to waste

What does go to waste mean?
Go to waste means to remain unused; not to fulfill its purpose.
What part of speech is go to waste?
Go to waste is a verb.
What is the past tense of go to waste?
The past tense of go to waste is went to waste.

Words near go to waste in the dictionary

  1. go to the washroom
  2. go to the well
  3. go to town
  4. go to town on
  5. go to war
  6. go to waste
  7. go to water
  8. go to work
  9. go together
  10. go toilet
  11. go too far

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: go to waste (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “go to waste.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/go_to_waste. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.