wasteland

CEFRB2

/ˈweɪs(t)ˌland/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
noun
An area of land where little can grow or live.
02
noun
Extra detail
A devastated, uninhabitable area.

Examples

I didn't expect to meet anyone in this wasteland.
The wasteland is not a hospitable place.

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Senses: 5
Parts of speech: 1
Citations: 5

Also pronounced

/ˈwæes(t)ˌlɛnd/
/ˈweɪs(t)ˌlənd/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

Any barren or uninteresting place.
A place with no remaining resources; a desert.
Unused land.

More examples

In context

What brings you to this wasteland?
After his experiences, he no longer found western Kansas such a wasteland.
Ten years of drought had left the area a wasteland.

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

After the fire, the forest became a dry blank with no plants.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Citations

The word in print, with each source given in full.

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
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.
2023 September 20, “National Rail Awards 2023”, in RAIL, page 82

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Origin

noun

Inherited from Middle English wast lond, modification of earlier weste lond, from Old English weste land (“wasteland”); equivalent to waste + land.

Deep Dive

noun

More examples

Quick test

After the fire, the forest became a dry blank— with no plants.

Nearby

Origin

noun

After the fire, the forest became a dry blank with no plants.