NAUTICAL COLLOQUIALISMS. [To TIts Er,!Toa sr TIM "SPICTITOL'] SIR,—In your
issue of October 10th your correspondent " E. W. J. B." has given an interesting nautical origin to certain words and phrases now in common use, but I doubt whether his derivation of the word " waster" will carry general conviction. It may be true enough, as he says, that in the old naval days "men of small worth" working amid- ships were known as " waisters," but surely the modern " waster" is a "man of small worth " not because of the work he does so much as because he neglects the work he ought to do. In a word, by wasting his time and his opportunities, and misdirecting such energies as he may have, he makes a waste of his life. The use of the substantive—indicating any one guilty of waste—is not merely modern. It is found in Proverbs xviii. 9 : " He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster," and may well stand as an apt description of one whose aimless and drifting ways
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