What Does squander Mean
The Latin word dilapidāre came to our language as dilapidate . This verb refers to squandering or squandering resources , whether their own or those that an individual has the responsibility of managing or administering.
For example: “If you continue like this, you are going to squander all your savings” , “We must not waste water since it is a scarce resource” , “How long are we going to tolerate public officials spending their money on squandering funds? public? " .
To delay means to waste : to make an unnecessary expense. Who squanders money or some good that can run out, therefore, is wasting it. It is a behavior that is not logical or rational.
Suppose a man wins a millionaire sum in the lottery. Family and friends suggest that you enjoy the prize, but also save and invest to make sure you don't have any financial problems in the future. The lucky guy, however, begins to squander the money he earned : he buys products that he neither needs nor uses, uses bills to light his cigarettes, pays for drinks to people he doesn't even know, and approaches him for convenience, etc. In this way, in a few years the man runs out of money.
The electricity is also a resource that sometimes is squandered. Each region has a limited generation capacity: once that limit is reached, service outages and interruptions occur due to high demand. If a person leaves all the lights in his house on, uses the air conditioning at a lower temperature than recommended and never turns off the television even if he is not watching, he is wasting electricity.
As can happen with many other terms, squander has at least one very similar, in this case we refer to stone , which generates certain confusion in everyday speech, since some people use them interchangeably despite the fact that their meanings are very different. By stoning we understand the action of " stoning someone to death", that is, violently throwing stones at him, or the very action of "throwing rocks at a person."
In this framework we can speak of the noun stoning , which precisely refers to a form of execution that was used in ancient times, which consisted of violently throwing stones at an inmate until he was killed. Given that human beings are capable of withstanding strong blows without losing consciousness, whenever they are inflicted on certain parts of the body, this sentence was especially atrocious because it produced a very slow and painful death.
If we ask ourselves why it is common for Spanish-speaking people to confuse these two words in informal language , we are probably looking at their component «tombstone», which in Latin derives from lapis, lapidis (which can be translated as « stone"). In the etymology of the verb lapidar we find lapidare , which also meant "to kill with blows of stone", and which attached to the noun lapis, lapidis the suffix -ar , so used in our language.
Well, in the verb squander we also have the noun lapis, lapidis , and the reason that both terms use the idea of "stone" to form their meanings is that when we think of "squandering, squandering or squandering" money we can imagine someone throwing stones without any qualms, wasting their goods indiscriminately and unconsciously.
In conclusion, we should not say, for example, that "the journalist squandered the singer in his article because of the quality of her presentation in the theater" but that, figuratively, he "stoned her" , referring to the negative nature of her performance. criticism , probably harshly pointing out aspects of her voice and her stage presence.