wasteland

Noun

wasteland (plural wastelands)

1. A place with no remaining resources; a desert.
   • Ten years of drought had left the area a wasteland.
   • Here create another wasteland / On and on 'til nothing's there / Here it comes, the devastation / Poisoning the air2007, Kai Hansen, "To Mother Earth", Gamma Ray, Land of the Free II.
2. Any barren or uninteresting place.
   • After his experiences, he no longer found western Kansas such a wasteland.
   • Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.1961 May 9, Newton N. Minow, Television and the Public Interest
3. A devastated, uninhabitable area.
   • Another place where, from the aesthetic point of view, a long tunnel would have been a real blessing, is East London as viewed from the carriage window on the old Great Eastern line. Despite a vast change from crowded slums to tracts of wasteland, due to its grim wartime experience, this approach...1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 703
   • How many nuclear missiles would have to be launched at the United States to turn it into a complete wasteland?2014, Randall Munroe, anonymous quotee, “Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #7”, in What If?, New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 157
4. Unused land.
   • Azaz and Ray were nominated individually for what, at first glance, looked like a project to transform wasteland at South Tottenham station into a community garden.2023 September 20, “National Rail Awards 2023”, in RAIL, page 82