squander

present singular third person squanders · participle present squandering · participle past squandered · past squandered

1. transitiveTo waste, lavish, splurge; to spend lavishly or profusely; to dissipate.

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   4 more examples

   Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.

   I have squandered money enormously.... I ought to have saved, but saving is not easy in such a whirl of excitement as that in which I have lived.

   1886, Cora Pearl, Memoirs

   Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar.

   1890, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, page 24

   As the game opened up, Bolton squandered a fine opportunity to equalise - Chris Eagles shooting straight at Szczesny - but then back came Arsenal.

   2011 September 24, David Ornstein, “Arsenal 3 - 0 Bolton”, in BBC Sport

   Synonyms: waste, lavish, splurge, slather, throw away, make ducks and drakes of, play ducks and drakes with, blow · Antonyms: conserve, hoard, save

2. obsoletetransitiveTo scatter; to disperse.

   […]our ſquander’d Troops he rallies:[…]

   1681, John Dryden, The Spanish Fryar: Or, the Double Discovery. […], London: […] Richard Tonson and Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act I, page 2

3. obsoletetransitiveTo wander at random; to scatter.

   […]The Wiſe-mans folly is anathomiz’d / Euen by ſquandring glances of the foole.

   c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene vii], page 193, column 1