wasty
/ˈweɪsti/
wasty adjective: resembling a waste or wasteland; desert; (by extension) deserted, desolate.
Adjective (1)
wasty (comparative wastier or more wasty, superlative wastiest or most wasty)
- Resembling a waste or wasteland; desert; (by extension) deserted, desolate.
- But, happily, we meet with circumstances that break in upon this routine and monotony, and we thank God, as Mungo Park did, when the moss peeped up at him from the wasty desert.1885, The Sunday Magazine, volume 14, page 199
- Frequent on wasty places and in the desert.1912, Reinhold Conrad Muschler, A Manual Flora of Egypt, volume 2, page 1068
Adjective (2)
wasty (comparative wastier, superlative wastiest)
- Containing or yielding much waste.
- Deteriorating, wasting away.
- This fruit was well packed and nicely graded, but unfortunately a wasty condition prevented satisfactory prices being obtained.1924, The Journal of the Department of Agriculture of Victoria
- Obese; excessively fat.
- .
- Then, too, the market demand is not so much for the extreme early maturing, excessive fat type, but it is for a trimmer, “less wasty” hog.1906, The Illinois Agriculturist, volume 11, page 239
- Resembling cotton-waste (the leftover cotton fibers from manufacturing and post-consumer sources that can be recycled into new products).
- Wasteful.
Examples of wasty in a sentence
- These boundaries were a long way down into the desert, below a corner of that fearful wasty wild known as the Great Erg.1922, The International Interpreter: The International News Weekly, page 658:
- It is formed of glacial rock in all sorts of shapes and sizes and gives a wasty, desert appearance.2009, George B. Bookman, Headlines, Deadlines and Lifelines, page 297:
- A red-tailed hawk swooped down into a stand of prickly pears in a “wasty” moonscape.2013, Alex Shoumatoff, Legends of the American Desert:
- A trim-middled hog will have a higher dressing percentage than a wasty, gutty, paunchy, heavy-middled hog.1958, John M. Kays, Basic animal husbandry, page 269:
Forms of wasty
| comparative | wastier |
|---|---|
| comparative | more wasty |
| superlative | wastiest |
| superlative | most wasty |
Origin of wasty
From Middle English wasti, westy, westi, westiȝ (“desolate, deserted; destitute”), from Old English wēstiġ (“wasty, desert, desolate”), from Proto-West Germanic *wōstīg (“waste-like, deserted”), equivalent to waste + -y. Cognate with Scots wasty, waisty (“desolate, deserted; unoccupied”), Dutch woestig (“inhospitable, rugged, wild”), German Low German wööstig (“desolate”).
From Middle English wasty (“extravagantly or wastefully expensive”), equivalent to waste + -y.
Words that rhyme with wasty
Questions about wasty
- What does wasty mean?
- Wasty means resembling a waste or wasteland; desert; (by extension) deserted, desolate.
- How do you use wasty in a sentence?
- These boundaries were a long way down into the desert, below a corner of that fearful wasty wild known as the Great Erg.
- What part of speech is wasty?
- Wasty is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce wasty?
- Wasty is pronounced /ˈweɪsti/.
Words near wasty in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wasty (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: “wasty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wasty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.