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squander

verb
/ˈskwɒnd.ə/UK/ˈskwɑn.dɚ/US

Etymology

Earliest uses (late 16th c.) "to spend recklessly or prodigiously", also "to scatter over a wide area". Of unknown origin. Perhaps a blend of scatter + wander. Compare Danish skvætte (rare)/skvatte (“to splash”) (nominalised: skvæt), Icelandic skvetta (“to squirt”), Swedish skvätta (“to splash”), Norwegian Bokmål skvette.

  1. inherited from *wandarōn✻ — “to wander”
  2. inherited from wandrian — “to wander, roam, fly around, hover; change; stray, err”
  3. inherited from wandren
  4. compounded as squander — “scatter + wander”

Definitions

  1. To waste, lavish, splurge

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

    • .
    • 1886, Cora Pearl, Memoirs. "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."
    • 1746, Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.

  2. To scatter

    To scatter; to disperse.

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

  3. To wander at random

    To wander at random; to scatter.

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

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at squander. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01squander02lavishly03expending04expenditure05expense06spending07spend

A definitional loop anchored at squander. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at squander

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA