fritter away

Just ask Henry David Thoreau, who was lamenting in 1854 that our lives are being “frittered away by detail.”

And here’s the thing: It’s easy to fritter away our power, but it would be a decades-long struggle to regain influence once it’s gone.

The article reports that -- contrary to popular belief -- massive multiplayer online gamers learn by gaming and their skills in the workplace are enriched by those seemingly endless hours previously thought of as frittering away time.

In reality, it was money "frittered away" by their daughter.

If this adds a hint of mitigation for England's failure to secure a second successive 3-0 clean sweep, there are few excuses for the way the hosts frittered away this Test.