Wasteland Meaning
/ˈweɪs(t)ˌland/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA place with no remaining resources; a desert.
nounAny barren or uninteresting place.
Sentence Examples
The wasteland is not a hospitable place.
What brings you to this wasteland?
I didn't expect to meet anyone in this wasteland.
CEFR Practice Quiz
After the fire, the forest became a dry ____ with no plants.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The area was once a flourishing industrial center, but it has now become a deserted ____ after the factory closed today.
Word Origin & History
Inherited from Middle English wast lond, modification of earlier weste lond, from Old English weste land (“wasteland”); equivalent to waste + land.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"2007, Kai Hansen, "To Mother Earth", Gamma Ray, Land of the Free II.
Here create another wasteland / On and on 'til nothing's there / Here it comes, the devastation / Poisoning the air"
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"Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland."
— 1961 May 9, Newton N. Minow, Television and the Public Interest:
"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."
— 1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 703:
"How many nuclear missiles would have to be launched at the United States to turn it into a complete wasteland?"
— 2014, Randall Munroe, anonymous quotee, “Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #7”, in What If?, New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 157:
"Yet had the whole train and all its bombs gone, had the engine crew merely jumped from the train and run as simple self-preservation would have suggested, or unhitched just the engine to make their escape faster, the whole town would have gone and most of the people with it, leaving just a smoking wasteland. Hundreds would have died."
— 2022 January 12, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL, number 948, page 43:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
After the fire, the forest became a dry ____ with no plants.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The area was once a flourishing industrial center, but it has now become a deserted ____ after the factory closed today.