wasty
/ˈweɪsti/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Resembling a waste or wasteland; desert; (by extension) deserted, desolate.
adj
Containing or yielding much waste.
adj
adj
adj
Resembling cotton-waste (the leftover cotton fibers from manufacturing and post-consumer sources that can be recycled into new products).
American usage
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "Frequent on wasty places and in the desert."
- "These boundaries were a long way down into the desert, below a corner of that fearful wasty wild known as the Great Erg."
- "It is formed of glacial rock in all sorts of shapes and sizes and gives a wasty, desert appearance."
- "A red-tailed hawk swooped down into a stand of prickly pears in a “wasty” moonscape."
- "This fruit was well packed and nicely graded, but unfortunately a wasty condition prevented satisfactory prices being obtained."
Etymology
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”).