Word.ws English Dictionary

wastingly

wastingly adverb: in a way that causes wastage; wastefully.

Adverb

wastingly (comparative more wastingly, superlative most wastingly)

  1. In a way that causes wastage; wastefully.
    • As in decapitating the whale, the operator's instrument is brought close to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the spermaceti magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest a careless, untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out its invaluable...1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Scribner, published 1902, page 295

Forms of wastingly

comparativemore wastingly
superlativemost wastingly

Origin of wastingly

From wasting + -ly.

Questions about wastingly

What does wastingly mean?
Wastingly means in a way that causes wastage; wastefully.
What part of speech is wastingly?
Wastingly is an adverb.

Words near wastingly in the dictionary

  1. wasting investments
  2. wasting palsies
  3. wasting palsy
  4. wasting sickness
  5. wasting time
  6. wastingly
  7. wastingness
  8. wastings
  9. wastness
  10. wastnesses
  11. wastoid

Source and license

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