wasteful
/ˈweɪstfəl/
wasteful adjective: inclined to waste or squander money or resources.
Adjective
wasteful (comparative more wasteful, superlative most wasteful)
- Inclined to waste or squander money or resources.
- As a narrative, competition of the type seen between the London Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) and the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) was seen as wasteful, with duplicate routes reflecting an unnecessary use of resources.2023 March 8, 'Industry Insider', “The Beeching legacy”, in RAIL, number 978, page 68
- Synonyms:
- prodigal, profligate, extravagant, improvident, imprudent, lavish, loose-handed, reckless, spendthrift, squandering
- Antonyms:
- unwasteful
- Uninhabited, desolate.
- Shortly vnto the vvaſtefull vvoods ſhe came, / VVhereas ſhe found the Goddeſſe vvith her crevv, […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 17, page 482
- Synonyms:
- deserted, peopleless, beingless, desert, howling, desolate, disinhabited, inhabitantless, inhabited, lifeless
wasteful meaning in Marathi, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
wasteful in Marathi
- अपव्ययकारक
wasteful in Urdu
- فضول خرچ, ضائع کرنے والا
wasteful in Bengali
- অপচয়জনক
wasteful in Malayalam
- നഷ്ടം വരുത്തിവയ്ക്കുന്ന, അനാവശ്യച്ചെലവായ, പാഴാക്കുന്ന, വിനാശകരമായ
More languagesFewer languages
- wasteful in Odia
- ଅପବ୍ଯ଼ଯ଼, ଅପବ୍ଯ଼ଯ଼କର
Synonyms of wasteful
- prodigal
- profligate
- extravagant
- improvident
- imprudent
- lavish
- loose-handed
- reckless
- spendthrift
- squandering
21 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Forms of wasteful
| comparative | more wasteful |
|---|---|
| superlative | most wasteful |
Origin of wasteful
From Middle English wastful; equivalent to waste + -ful.
Words formed from wasteful
Words that rhyme with wasteful
Questions about wasteful
- What does wasteful mean?
- Wasteful means inclined to waste or squander money or resources.
- What is wasteful in Marathi?
- Wasteful in Marathi is अपव्ययकारक. See Wasteful meaning in Marathi.
- What part of speech is wasteful?
- Wasteful is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce wasteful?
- Wasteful is pronounced /ˈweɪstfəl/.
Words near wasteful in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wasteful (page history and authors); wasteful (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wasteful (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wasteful (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wasteful (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wasteful (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vininn126-wasteful.wav.
Cite this entry: “wasteful.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wasteful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.