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wastrel

noun

No English definition recorded for this entry.

L330320 on Wikidata ↗

Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /ˈweɪstɹəl/

noun

Etymology: 1847, waste + -rel (pejorative).

  1. One who is profligate, who wastes time or resources extravagantly.

    And so with one thing and other the auld witch raised the fiends of jealousy in that innocent heart. She would cry out that Heriotside was an ill-doing wastrel, and had no business to come and flatter honest lassies.

    Mary’s mother—if that was her picture—may have been a wastrel in her spare time (she had thirteen children by a minister of the church), but if so her gay and dissipated life had left too few traces of its pleasures on her face.

  2. A neglected child.
  3. Refuse; rubbish.