wasteland

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English wast lond, modification of earlier weste lond, from Old English weste land (“wasteland”); equivalent to waste + land.

noun

1. A place with no remaining resources; a desert.
   Ten years of drought had left the area a wasteland.
   2007, Kai Hansen, "To Mother Earth", Gamma Ray, Land of the Free II. Here create another wasteland / On and on 'til nothing's there / Here it comes, the devastation / Poisoning the air
2. Any barren or uninteresting place.
   After his experiences, he no longer found western Kansas such a wasteland.
   Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland. May 9 1961, Newton N. Minow, Television and the Public Interest
3. A devastated, uninhabitable area.
   How many nuclear missiles would have to be launched at the United States to turn it into a complete wasteland? 2014, Randall Munroe, anonymous quotee, “Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #7”, in What If?, New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 157
   Yet had the whole train and all its bombs gone, had the engine crew merely jumped from the train and run as simple self-preservation would have suggested, or unhitched just the engine to make their escape faster, the whole town would have gone and most of the people with it, leaving just a smoking wasteland. Hundreds would have died. January 12 2022, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL, number 948, page 43