fritter away
English
Etymology
Verb
to fritter away (third-person singular simple present fritters away, present participle frittering away, simple past and past participle frittered away)
- (transitive) To squander or waste.
- (transitive) To decrease in an incremental way without hindrance.
- 1839, Charles Dickens, chapter 6, in Nicholas Nickleby:
- “There is little need,” said the monk, with a meaning look, “to fritter away the time in gewgaws.”
- 1890, James M. Barrie, chapter 4, in My Lady Nicotine:
- I had been frittering away my money, too, on luxuries.
- M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated by Mahadev Desai, Part I, chapter xv[1]:
- Meanwhile my friend had not ceased to worry about me. His love for me led him to think that, if I persisted in my objections to meat-eating, I should not only develop a weak constitution, but should remain a duffer, because I should never feel at home in English society. When he came to know that I had begun to interest myself in books on vegetarianism, he was afraid lest these studies should muddle my head; that I should fritter my life away in experiments, forgetting my own work, and become a crank.
Translations
to squander
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