Emily Dickinson Lexicon

WAST'ING, ppr.

1. Lavishing prodigally; expending or consuming without use; diminishing by slow dissipation; desolating; laying waste. Wasting and relentless war has made ravages, with but few and short intermissions, from the days of the tyrant Nimrod down to the Nimrod of our own age. – J. Lyman.
2. adj. Diminishing by dissipation or by great destruction; as, a wasting disease.