waste not, want not
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Being frugal helps avoid poverty or need
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Tiết kiệm giúp tránh nghèo đói hoặc thiếu thốn
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: not wasting things results in not lacking them
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
when you're brought up in the war you see, waste not, want not
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “List of proverbial phrases” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “waste not, want not” mean?
Being frugal helps avoid poverty or need Literally: not wasting things results in not lacking them
Is “waste not, want not” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.