Word.ws English Dictionary

wasted breath

wasted breath is the simple past and past participle of waste breath.

Meaning of waste breath

Verb

waste breath (third-person singular simple present wastes breath, present participle wasting breath, simple past and past participle wasted breath)

  1. (idiomatic) To speak in a manner which is needless or futile; to make points in discussion or argument which are not appreciated or heeded.
    • Middleton and Paul saw no use in wasting their breath in remonstrances against this proposal.1827, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 24, in The Prairie

Questions about wasted breath

What is wasted breath the simple past and past participle of?
Wasted breath is the simple past and past participle of waste breath.

Words near wasted breath in the dictionary

  1. wastecans
  2. wastecoat
  3. wastecoats
  4. wasted
  5. wasted away
  6. wasted breath
  7. wasted time
  8. wasteful
  9. wastefully
  10. wastefulness
  11. wastefulnesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wasted breath (page history and authors); waste breath (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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