Meanings
plural wastrels
- countabledatedOne who is profligate, who wastes time or resources extravagantly.
Party politics didn’t come naturally to me. I was a twentysomething crypto-anarchist wastrel from the outer suburbs of Bristol who’d spent five years after university moving between jobs and getting distracted.
2019 November 19, Tom Meadowcroft, “Unite to Remain could hurt the anti-Brexit cause. That’s why I’m no longer a Green candidate”, in The Guardian2 more examples
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.
1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the TideMary’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.
1929 September, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, uniform edition, London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, […], published 1931 (April 1935 printing), →OCLC, page 32
Synonyms & antonyms
nounsomeone who dissipates resources self-indulgently
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
1847, waste + -rel (pejorative).
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Bulgarian разсипник
- разсипник (razsipnik)A person who wastes resources and/or time.
French gaspilleur, gaspilleuse
- gaspilleurA person who wastes resources and/or time.
- gaspilleuseA person who wastes resources and/or time.
German Verschwender
- VerschwenderA person who wastes resources and/or time.
Māori kūrapa
- kūrapaA person who wastes resources and/or time.
Polish utracjusz, utracjuszka
- utracjuszA person who wastes resources and/or time.
- utracjuszkaA person who wastes resources and/or time.
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
wastrel. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wastrel
“wastrel.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wastrel. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “wastrel,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wastrel.
Source: wastrel on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.