Wasteland
noun ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A place with no remaining resources; a desert.
"Ten years of drought had left the area a wasteland."
- 2 an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation wordnet
- 3 Any barren or uninteresting place.
"After his experiences, he no longer found western Kansas such a wasteland."
- 4 A devastated, uninhabitable area.
"Another place where, from the aesthetic point of view, a long tunnel would have been a real blessing, is East London as viewed from the carriage window on the old Great Eastern line. Despite a vast change from crowded slums to tracts of wasteland, due to its grim wartime experience, this approach still provides a shabby and unworthy introduction to the great capital."
- 5 Unused land.
"Azaz and Ray were nominated individually for what, at first glance, looked like a project to transform wasteland at South Tottenham station into a community garden."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Over the next fifteen years, architects, planners and community developers will work together to transform 346 acres of industrial wasteland into 6,500 homes, two shopping centres, a marina, a primary school and college, and parkland."
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English wast lond, modification of earlier weste lond, from Old English weste land (“wasteland”); equivalent to waste + land.
More for "wasteland"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.