Emily Dickinson Lexicon

WASP'ISH-NESS, n.

Petulance; irascibility; snappishness.

WAS'SAIL, n. [Sax. wæs-hæl, health-liquor.]

1. A liquor made of apples, sugar, and ale, formerly much used by English good-fellows. – Johnson.
2. A drunken bout. – Shak.
3. A merry song. – Ainsworth. [This word is unknown in America.]

WAS'SAIL, v.i.

To hold a merry, drinking meeting.

WAS'SAIL-BOWL, n.

A bowl for holding wassail.

WAS'SAIL-CUP, n.

A cup in which wassail was carried to the company. – Cyc.

WAS'SAIL-ER, n.

A toper; a drunkard. – Milton.

WAST, v.

past tense of the substantive verb, in the second person; as, thou wast.

WASTE, a.

1. Destroyed; ruined. The Sophi leaves all waste in his retreat. – Milton.
2. Desolate; uncultivated; as, a waste country; a waste, howling wilderness. Deut. xxxii.
3. Destitute; stripped; as, lands laid waste.
4. Superfluous; lost for want of occupiers. And strangled with her waste fertility. – Milton.
5. Worthless; that which is rejected, or used only for mean purposes; as, waste wood.
6. That of which no account is taken, or of which no value is found; as, waste paper.
7. Uncultivated; untitled; unproductive. There is yet much waste land in England. – Cyc. Laid waste, desolated; ruined.

WASTE, n.

1. The act of squandering; the dissipation of property through wantonness, ambition, extravagance, luxury, or negligence. For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood. – Milton.
2. Consumption; loss; useless expense; any loss or destruction which is neither necessary nor promotive of good end; a loss for which there is no equivalent; as, a waste of goods or money; a waste of time; a waste of labor; a waste of words. Little wastes in great establishments, constantly occurring, may defeat the energies of a mighty capital. – L. Beecher.
3. A desolate or uncultivated country. The plains of Arabia are mostly a wide waste.
4. Land untitled, though capable of tillage; as, the wastes in England.
5. Ground, space, or place unoccupied; as, the ethereal waste. In the dead waste and middle of the night. – Shak.
6. Region ruined and deserted. All the leafy nation sinks at last, / And Vulcan rides in triumph o'er the waste. – Dryden.
7. Mischief; destruction. He will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt in again. – Shak.
8. In law, spoil, destruction, or injury done to houses, woods fences, lands, &c., by a tenant for life or for years, to the prejudice of the heir, or of him in reversion or remainder. Waste is voluntary, as by pulling down buildings; or permissive, as by suffering them to fall for want of necessary repairs. Whatever does a lasting damage to the freehold is a waste. – Blackstone.

WASTE, v.i.

1. To dwindle; to be diminished; to lose bulk or substance gradually; as, the body wastes in sickness. The barrel of meal shall not waste. – 1 Kings xvii.
2. To be diminished or lost by slow dissipation, consumption, or evaporation; as, water wastes by evaporation; fuel wastes in combustion.
3. To be consumed by time or mortality. But man dieth, and wasteth away. – Job xiv.

WASTE, v.t. [Sax. westan, awestan; G. verwüsten; D. verwoesten; L. vasto; It. guastare; Sp. and Port. gastar, for guastar; Fr. gâter; Arm. goasta. The W. gwasgaru, scatter, seems to be compound. The primary sense is probably to scatter, to spread. Class Bz, No. 2.]

1. To diminish by gradual dissipation or loss. Thus disease wastes the patient; sorrows waste the strength and spirits.
2. To cause to be lost; to destroy by scattering or by injury. Thus cattle waste their fodder when fed in the open field.
3. To expend without necessity or use; to destroy wantonly or luxuriously; to squander; to cause to be lost through wantonness or negligence. Careless people waste their fuel, their food, or their property. Children waste their inheritance. And wasted his substance with riotous living. – Luke xv.
4. To destroy in enmity; to desolate; as, to waste an enemy's country.
5. To suffer to be lost unnecessarily; or to throw away; as, to waste the blood and treasure of a nation.
6. To destroy by violence. The Tyber / Insults our walls, and wastes our fruitful grounds. – Dryden.
7. To impair strength gradually. Now wasting years my former strength confounds. – Broome.
8. To lose in idleness or misery; to wear out. Here condemn'd / To waste eternal days in woe and pain. – Milton.
9. To spend; to consume. O were I able / To waste it all myself, and leave you none. – Milton.
10. In law, to damage, impair, or injure, as an estate, voluntarily, or by suffering the buildings, fences, &c. to go to decay. See the Noun.
11. To exhaust; to be consumed by time or mortality. Till your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness. – Numb. xiv.
12. To scatter and lose for want of use or of occupiers. Fall many a flow'r is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air. – Gray.

WAST'ED, pp.

1. Expended without necessity or use; lost through negligence; squandered.
2. Diminished; dissipated; evaporated; exhausted.
3. Desolated; ruined; destroyed.

WASTE'FUL, a.

1. Lavish; prodigal; expending property or that which is valuable, without necessity or use; applied to persons.
2. Destructive to property; ruinous; as, wasteful practice or negligence; wasteful expenses.
3. Desolate; unoccupied; untitled; uncultivated. In wilderness and wasteful deserts stray'd. – Spenser.

WASTE'FUL-LY, adv.

In a lavish manner; with prodigality; in useless expenses or consumption. Her lavish hand is wastefully profuse. – Dryden.

WASTE'FUL-NESS, n.

Lavishness; prodigality; the act or practice of expending what is valuable, without necessity or use.

WASTE'-GATE, n.

A gate to let the water of a pond pass.

WAS'TEL, n.

A particular sort of bread; fine bread or cake. – Lowth. Cyc.

WASTE'NESS, n.

A desolate state; solitude. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness. – Zeph. i.

WAST'ER, n.

1. One who is prodigal; one who squanders property; one who consumes extravagantly or without use. He also that is slothful in his work, is brother to him who is a great waster. Prov. xviii. Sconces are great wasters or candles. – Swift.
2. A kind of cudgel. – Beaum.

WASTE'THRIFT, n. [waste and thrift.]

A spendthrift. – Beaum. Beaum.

WASTE'-WI-ER, n.

An overfall or wier for the superfluous water of a canal. – Cyc.

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.

WAST'REL, or WAST'O-REL, n.

Waste substances; any thing cast away as bad. [Local.] – Cyc.

WAST'REL, n.

A state of waste or common. [Local.]

WATCH, n. [Sax. wæcca, from wæcan, wæccan, to wake; Sw. vacht or vakt, watch, guard; vachta, to watch; Dan. vagt. It is from the same root as wake, – which see.]

1. Forbearance of sleep.
2. Attendance without sleep. All the long night their mournful watch they keep. – Addison.
3. Attention; close observation. Keep watch of the suspected man.
4. Guard; vigilance for keeping or protecting against danger. He kept both watch and ward. – – Spenser.
5. A watchman or watchmen; men set for a guard, either one person or more, set to espy the approach of an enemy or other danger, and to give an alarm or notice of such danger; a sentinel; a guard. He kept a watch at the gate. – Bacon. Ye have a watch; go your way, make it as sure as ye can. – Matth. xxvii.
6. The place where a guard is kept. He upbraids Iago, that he made him / Brave me upon the watch. – Shak.
7. Post or office of a watchman. As I did stand my watch upon the hill. – Shak.
8. A period of the night, in which one person or one set of persons stand as sentinels; or the time from one relief of sentinels to another. This period, among the Israelites, seems to have been originally four hours, but was afterward three hours, and there were four watches during the night. Hence we read in Scripture of the morning watch, and of the second, third, and fourth watch; the evening, watch commencing at six o'clock, the second at nine, the third at twelve, and the fourth at three in the morning. – Exod. xiv. Matth. xiv. Luke xii.
9. A small time-piece or chronometer, to be carried in the pocket or about the person, in which the machinery is moved by a spring.
10. At sea, the space of time during which one set or division of the crew remain on deck to perform the necessary duties. This is different in different nations. – Cyc. To be on the watch, to be looking steadily for some event.