waste not want not

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the proverb that careful, economical use of resources prevents future scarcity — that if one avoids wasting what one has, one will not suffer from want later; the phrase encodes the ethic of thrift and careful stewardship of resources that characterised pre-industrial and subsistence economies where food, materials, and money were scarce and their loss could have serious consequences; in the context of modern environmental concern, the phrase has been revived as a principle of sustainable consumption, pointing to the connection between the profligate disposal of resources and the depletion of natural systems on which future welfare depends; it is used both as personal financial advice and as a broader statement about the relationship between present consumption and future wellbeing