Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Squandering   /skwˈɑndərɪŋ/   Listen
Squandering

noun
1.
Spending resources lavishly and wastefully.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Squandering" Quotes from Famous Books



... wrecks. But over their debris, Mercury and Venus—the busy season and the gay season—ran lightly, hand in hand. Men getting money and women squandering it. Whole nights in the ball-room. Gold pouring in at the hopper and out at the spout,—Carondelet street emptying like a yellow river into Canal street. Thousands for vanity; thousands for pride; thousands for influence and for station; thousands ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... traversed through the earth. Before him lay original nature in her wild but sublime beauty. Behind him he leaves a desert, a deformed and ruined land; for childish desire of destruction, or thoughtless squandering of vegetable treasures, has destroyed the character of nature; and, terrified, man himself flies from the arena of his actions, leaving the impoverished earth to barbarous races or to animals, so long as yet another spot ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... Mme. de Berny actual suffering to see her young friend toiling for sheer mercenary ends, and squandering the precious years of his youth in writing novels that were frankly hack-work; and it hurt her also to see the condition of financial servitude in which his family kept him. While the father, Francois de Balzac, watched his son's efforts with indulgent irony, for he held that novels were to the ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... she nor John guessed that the bridegroom's only reason for not being vexed with both of them was that he was not of the sort to let himself be vexed. Each had disappointed him seriously; Fannie by setting up domestic love and felicity as a purpose instead of an appliance, squandering her care and strength in a short-sighted devotion to his physical needs, and showing herself unfit to co-operate with him in the things for which he thought it no great matter to risk his life; and John by failing so utterly to discern the true situation in Suez that ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... seen the total, but he was white with rage already. He had made up his mind to squeeze a small fortune out of the Abbey House estate during his brief lease of the property; and here was this foolish wife of his squandering ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... sun's up-wandering, His rays on the rock's brow And hill-side squandering; Be glad my soul! and sing amidst thy pleasure, Fly from the house of dust, Up with thy thanks and trust To heaven's azure! ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... of the persistent opposition on the part of what was probably only a small minority of the Cuban people. For several years, the unrest and the agitation continued. Spain's blindness to the situation is puzzling. In his Cuba and International Relations, Mr. Callahan says: "Spain, after squandering a continent, had still clung tenaciously to Cuba; and the changing governments which had been born (in Spain) only to be strangled, held her with a taxing hand. While England had allowed her colonies to rule themselves, Spain had persisted in keeping ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... life; nay, those who had never seen Fellside argued that Lady Maulevrier had taken in her old age to hoarding, and that she pigged at a cottage in the Lake district, in order to swell a fortune which young Maulevrier would set about squandering as soon as she was in her coffin. But here they were wrong. It was not in Lady Maulevrier's nature to lead a sordid life in order to save money. Yet in these quiet years that were gone—starting with that golden nucleus which her husband was supposed to have brought ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... it. I was now with men I admired. I was proud to be with them. Had all my pinching and saving brought me the equivalent of one of the many thrills which had been mine since I came among the oyster pirates? Then what was worth while—money or thrills? These men had no horror of squandering a nickel, or many nickels. They were magnificently careless of money, calling up eight men to drink whisky at ten cents a glass, as French Frank had done. Why, Nelson had just spent sixty cents on beer for ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing. This condition of art is called "art for art's sake." This neglect of inner meanings, which is the life of colours, this vain squandering of artistic power is called ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky

... learned the drug business, but took his first course in the useful art of deception, reading and writing verses by the light of a candle concealed in a box, to hide its rays from his thrifty grandmother, who was adverse not only to the waste of candles but to the squandering ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... a total mistake to bring, as it were, all the misery and misfortune together, and say, now find me a remedy large as the evil, to meet it. Resolve the evil into its original component parts. Imagine that there had been no such thing as the squandering, drinking, absentee Irish landlords we read of in the last generation—do you suppose that we should have as many inhabitants in St. Giles's, and the Liverpool cellars, to look after now? So, with the English landlords and manufacturers ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... must say a word or two. On finding himself the uncontrolled inheritor of his father's ill-gotten wealth, he accelerated his progress in drunkenness and profligacy. He took to the turf, became a gambler and spendthrift, and went backwards in squandering his fortune through as unprincipled a course as his father pursued in making it. From step to step he came down until nothing was left. Having no manly principle to sustain him, he fell from one stage of rascality and meanness to another, until he succeeded at length in getting himself appointed ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... Roman. Yes! let them celebrate the First of August as the day to them of deliverance and glory; and leave to us the pleasant employment of commenting upon their motives, of devising means to shelter the African slaver from their search, and of squandering millions to support, on a pestilential coast, a squadron of the stripes and stars, with instructions sooner to scuttle their ships than to molest the pirate slaver who shall make his flagstaff the herald of ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... Control; and I am of opinion, that if the House left the two bodies to combat one another, they would at last come to an accurate perception of what they both are. The East India Company accused the Board of Control of making wars and squandering the revenue which the Company collected. But Mr. Kaye said that Mr. Tucker deplored the mystery and the mockery of a system which obscured responsibility and deluded public opinion. It is because of this concealment, of this delusion practised ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... explained to the new boy, "to get through the 'swat' with as little squandering of valuable time as possible. It doesn't pay to be skewed. We must mug up our 'cons' well enough to scrape along without 'puns' ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... just as I knocked at Mrs Maine's door, a regular squandering, scattering fire began, and you could hear the bullets striking the wall with a sharp pat, bringing down showers of white lime-dust and ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... capacities which I had lacked hitherto. John evidently "knew his way about," as they say; and I was diverted to think how Miss Josephine St. Michael would have nodded over his adequacy and shaken her head at his squandering it on such a companion. But it was no squandering; the boy's heavy spirit was making a gallant "bluff" at playing up with the lively party he had no choice but to join, and this one saw the moment he was not called upon to ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... will act on his behalf— to plead his cause for him. For he's going to carouse at my house. I shall tell the old man that I'm going to Sunium, to the fair, to purchase the female servant that Geta mentioned a while since, so that, when they don't see me here, they mayn't suppose that I'm squandering their money. But there is a noise at the ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... our birds are the so-called "collectors," men who plunder nests and murder their owners in the name of science. Not the genuine ornithologist, for no one is more careful of squandering bird life than he; but the sham ornithologist, the man whose vanity or affectation happens to take an ornithological turn. He is seized with an itching for a collection of eggs and birds because it happens to be the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... prayers are put up every day that go no deeper and no higher than that, if the motives were analyzed—and the Holy Ghost does analyze. I am afraid many wives pray for their husbands on the same tack. They are not troubled that their husbands are living in disobedience to God, squandering their time, talents, and money, and robbing the kingdom of Jesus Christ of what they might be doing for it;—the agonizing consideration is, that, if religious, they would spend so much more time at home; that they are wasting the money, instead of laying it up for the children; and that, ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth

... No money left for squandering heirs! Bills turn the lenders into debtors: The wish of Nero[3] now is theirs, "That they ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... not be here at our wedding," he began. "You are not going to live with us! And here have I been squandering all that I had! Oh! Lucien, as I came along, bringing Eve her little bits of wedding jewelry, I did not think that I should be sorry I spent the money on them." He brushed his hand over his eyes as he drew the little cases ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... ask people for money when she herself was spending so much on her own selfish pleasure? Nor did it help her or quiet her that, having actually told Frederick, in her desire to make up for what she was squandering, that she would be grateful if he would let her have some money, he instantly gave her a cheque for L100. He asked no questions. She was scarlet. He looked at her a moment and then looked away. It was a relief to Frederick that she should take some money. She gave it all immediately ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... after all, the essence of scientific management—to accomplish some desired result without any waste moves and without squandering valuable material; and surely no artistic loss will be involved if efficiency of this type is applied to conducting a musical rehearsal. On the contrary, the application of such methods will enable the conductor to secure ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... do more may do less. He that, by selling, or squandering, may disinherit a whole family, may certainly disinherit part, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... symmetrical, stuccoed cubes which have lately been piled up everywhere in heaven-offending masses, and one is glad to come back to them after the nightmare that has lasted twenty years. Moreover, one is surprised to find how little permanent effect has been produced by the squandering of countless millions during the building mania, beyond a cruel destruction of trees, and a few modifications of natural local accidents. To do the moderns justice, they have done no one act of vandalism as ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... and well. I am squandering money on all sorts of follies, and every minute I thank God that such a wicked woman as I am has no children. I am singing and I am a success, but it is not a passing whim. No. It is my haven, my convent cell ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... his clothes till he went to bed. Robert now, with a band of discontented young nobles, plunged into border warfare against his father. He then wandered over a large part of Europe, begging and receiving money and squandering all that he got. His mother too sent him money, which led to the first quarrel between William and Matilda after so many years of faithful union. William rebuked his wife for helping his enemy in breach of his orders: she pleaded the mother's ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... money puzzled her. In one way he seemed to place too much value upon it, and in another way not enough. He overemphasized the importance of a ten-thousand-dollar salary, making that the one goal of his business efforts, and then calmly proposed squandering dollar bills on confectionery and what not as an incident to as simple an amusement as a walk in the park. He neither knew how little a dollar was worth, nor how much. She herself had learned out of hard experience, and if she could only make him understand—well, that at least furnished ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... not so; the contrary of so; Kur-Pfalz was not ready to give Berg for it!'—[We are not deep in German History, we British Diplomatic gentlemen, who are squandering, now and of old, so much money on it! The Aulic Council, "falls into our arms like dead men;" but it is certain the Elector Palatine was not ready to give Berg ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... not to mention other and higher advantages. No doubt wealth when very great tends to convert men into useless drones, but their number is never large; and some degree of elimination here occurs, for we daily see rich men, who happen to be fools or profligate, squandering away their wealth. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... back with horror on the years of my young manhood, for I was guilty of slaying men in battle, of gambling, of riotous squandering of substance gained by the toil of serfs, of deceit, and of profligacy. That course of life lasted ten years. Then I took to writing, but the motive was grovelling, for I aimed at gaining ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... time cannot last! Squandering, and Payment by Loan is no way to choke a Deficit. Neither is oil the substance for quenching conflagrations;—but, only for assuaging them, not permanently! To the Nonpareil himself, who wanted not insight, it is clear at intervals, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... rough voices, even when they were making love, as they had to dominate the noise of the firing, and violent gestures, as if they were using their swords and issuing orders, who did not waste time over useless refinements, and in squandering the precious hours which were counted so avariciously, in minor caresses, but sounded the charge immediately, and made the assault, without meeting with any more resistance than they did ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant



Words linked to "Squandering" :   waste, wastefulness, squander, squandermania, dissipation



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com