Wasteland is a compound of waste (from Old North French waster, ultimately from Latin vastus 'empty, desolate') and land. The historical chain includes Latin vastus and Old English land. The quoted older sense, "empty, desolate," supplies the immediate semantic anchor for wasteland. The formation is best read as compound and borrowed: the word wasteland carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "a barren or desolate area of land". Related English forms include waste, land, and wilderness. The result is a noun whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.