Word.ws English Dictionary

time-waster

time-waster noun: someone who wastes their own time or the time of others.

Noun

time-waster (plural time-wasters)

  1. Someone who wastes their own time or the time of others.
    • I showed him round the property thinking he was a prospective buyer, but in fact he was just a time-waster.
  2. (idiomatic, informal) Something unproductive.
    • Email was supposed to improve business efficiency, but all too often it turns out to be a time-waster.
  3. Something which passes the time that may or may not be seen positively.
    • This puzzle book is a good time-waster when my train is late.

Forms of time-waster

pluraltime-wasters
alternative formtimewaster

Questions about time-waster

What does time-waster mean?
Time-waster means someone who wastes their own time or the time of others.
What part of speech is time-waster?
Time-waster is a noun.
What is the plural of time-waster?
The plural of time-waster is time-wasters.

Words near time-waster in the dictionary

  1. time-varied gain control
  2. time-varying
  3. time-waiter
  4. time-waiters
  5. time-waste
  6. time-waster
  7. time-wasters
  8. time-wastes
  9. time-wasting
  10. time-watch
  11. time-watches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: time-waster (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: “time-waster.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/time-waster. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.