Question
Updated on
22 Jun 2020
- Italian
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Japanese
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English (UK)
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English (US)
Question about English (UK)
can the expression "to waste time" be used in a good way too? ex "I wasted time because I bought a present for my girlfriend"
or you waste time only when what you did was not useful, boring etc...
can the expression "to waste time" be used in a good way too? ex "I wasted time because I bought a present for my girlfriend"
or you waste time only when what you did was not useful, boring etc...
or you waste time only when what you did was not useful, boring etc...
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- English (UK)
Not really, at least not in that scenario. That makes it sound like the time spent buying a present for his girlfriend was not useful.
In general, the word “waste” itself means used unwisely, not useful
So to say “It was a waste of time” instantly suggests you regret it
However you can say it in a somewhat positive way, for example “Let’s go for a walk to waste time.” That doesn’t suggest you’re going to regret it, but more that your time isn’t being spent productively (which may be a good thing if you want to relax!)
Either way it’s quite difficult to use “waste” in a positive way though
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- Italian
@Jen_horwill thanks a lot. so how would you say it in a positive way? which verb would you use if you lost time but you'd do that again because it was anyway useful?
- English (UK)
@pascooalo If you don’t want it to sound negative you could just say you “passed” time.
Examples:
“Let’s pass time by going for a walk”
“i’m going to read a book to pass time”
Back to the “buying a present for a girlfriend” scenario, you’d probably have to say it was “time-consuming” but add another sentence onto it to make it clear that it wasn’t a bad experience:
“I bought a present for my girlfriend which was quite time-consuming but it was worth it”
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- English (UK)
Or you could say “I spent a lot of time buying a present for my girlfriend” - this also sounds okay and not necessarily negative ☺️ it depends on the tone in which you say it (if you sound happy about it it’ll come across as a good experience)
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- Italian
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