wasteness
English edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English wastnesse; equivalent to waste + -ness.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
wasteness (countable and uncountable, plural wastenesses)
- (obsolete) The state of being laid waste; desolation.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Zephaniah 1:15:
- That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness,
- (now rare) The state of being uncultivated; wild, barren.
- 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter I, in Rob Roy. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 3:
- Under her rays, the ground over which we passed assumed a more interesting appearance than during the broad day-light, which discovered the extent of its wasteness.
- 1856, John Ruskin, “Of Mountain Beauty”, in Modern Painters […], volume IV, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, , § 2:
- […] I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the foot of the old tower of Calais church. The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea grasses […]
- (obsolete) A wilderness.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- She of nought affrayd, / Through woods and wastnesse wide him daily sought