Word.ws English Dictionary

wasting breath

wasting breath is the present participle and gerund 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 wasting breath

What is wasting breath the present participle and gerund of?
Wasting breath is the present participle and gerund of waste breath.

Words near wasting breath in the dictionary

  1. wastier
  2. wastiest
  3. wastin'
  4. wasting
  5. wasting away
  6. wasting breath
  7. wasting disease
  8. wasting diseases
  9. wasting investment
  10. wasting investments
  11. wasting palsies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wasting 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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