wastagen.

1756 P. Browne Civil & Nat. Hist. Jamaica i. ii. 23 His goods must be shiped on board of some drover, where they seldom fail paying the usual tributes of pilferage and wastage.

1796 Ann. Reg., Projects 436 The allowance from a pound to a pound and half for wastage.

1801 Asiatic Ann. Reg. 1800 Misc. Tracts 203/1 The allowance for the wastage in the drying is rendered perfectly arbitrary.

1852 C. Morfit Art of Tanning, Currying, & Leather-dressing (1853) 325 The loss and wastage upon hides, from hair, flesh, &c., may be estimated at from 12 to 15 per cent.

1861 S. Smiles Lives Engineers II. 196 The lightermen claimed as their right the perquisites of ‘wastage’ and ‘leakage’.

1904 Times 24 Aug. 6/1 The scheme for reinforcement is prepared for a far heavier wastage than has as yet taken place.

1885 H. C. McCook Tenants Old Farm 118 A noble German lady found..there was a vast wastage in her household.

1889 Harper's Mag. Jan. 178/2 There is a subtlety which here in Rome Men look for in blind wastage of their lives, Not knowing where to seek it.

1906 Daily Chron. 8 May 6/6 It is doubtful if anywhere in the world there is a greater wastage of coal than in Bombay.

1909 Webster's New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang. Wastage,..3. wasting; laying waste; desolating.

1954 M. Beresford Lost Villages Eng. v. 165 Rokeby and Mortham on the Tees had not recovered from their wastage by the Scots in the fourteenth century.

1919 M. Greenwood in Jrnl. Royal Stat. Soc. 82 187 Our industrial ‘death’ rate would then merely be the rate at which entrants to a trade pass out of it, or,..with a..narrower circle, the rates of departure from particular factories. In this sense, ‘death’ or wastage rates for different factories will be prima facie measures of the efficiencies of the respective factories.

1944 Min. of Fuel & Power Statistics Digest from 1938 6 in Parl. Papers 1943–4 (Cmd. 6538) VIII. 151 Net natural wastage... [Note] This is the gross natural wastage less the normal juvenile recruitment.

1948 Ann. Rep. Nat. Coal Board 1947 iv. 45 in Parl. Papers 1947–8 X. 387 The manpower target set for the Board..was.. 730,000 men... This meant a net increase..of 40,000..and, since wastage was estimated at 60/65,000 men over the year, a recruitment of 100,000 was needed.

1952 C. P. Blacker Eugenics: Galton & After ix. 219 A modest claim..is made..that wastage among favourably-assessed parachutists proved smaller than among those unfavourably assessed.

1956 School Sci. Rev. June 375 The Rector of Imperial College, Dr. R. P. Linstead, in a lecture last October, said (speaking of what he called ‘academic wastage’), ‘This academic wastage makes itself shown in different universities, but in this College much of the wastage occurs during the first year.’

1958 Technology May 66/2 The question of wastage in apprenticeship.

1963 Higher Educ.: Rep. Comm. under Ld. Robbins 20 in Parl. Papers 1962–3 (Cmnd. 2154) XI. 639 We discount all those who begin courses but do not successfully complete them. This is commonly described as ‘wastage’—a term that we adopt for reasons of conformity but that we regard as carrying misleading implications. Wastage rates in higher education have not varied much in recent years.

1975 Times 25 Nov. 1/3 Nursing staff..were liable to ‘natural wastage’.

1979 ‘J. le Carré’ Smiley's People (1980) v. 65 He resigned of his own accord.., part of the wastage rate that gets everyone so worried.

1983 Financial Times 23 Apr. i. 34 The savings which the bank is seeking will involve natural wastage, retraining, redeployment and some measure of redundancy.