Learn English – will , will be vs will get

idiomatic-languagepassive-voice

Of the below sentences, which sentence is grammatically correct.

When do we use which of the below sentence?

  • If we can't leave by 4 o clock then our 1 hour is going to waste.
  • if we can't leave by 4 o clock then our 1 hour is going to be wasted.
  • if we can't leave by 4 o clock then our 1 hour is going to get wasted.

(Edit) From the comments, OP is trying to say that, since "peak hour traffic on the road will increase if we don't leave by certain time", some time is going to be wasted. Is there a better way to express this in natural, idiomatic English? Also, is there a way to express it naturally using the passive voice?

Best Answer

"To waste time" means to spend some amount of time in useless or frivolous activity.

After he got home he wasted an hour watching TV before starting his homework.

In your example the activity is neither useless nor frivolous. Rather, it just takes more time than expected.

If we don't leave by 4 pm it will take us an extra hour to get there, because of the traffic.

This is, of course, based on opinion. If you have something important to do at the destination, then you might feel time spent in traffic is wasted:

..., we will waste an hour just sitting in traffic.

You can also state this from the perspective of some future condition:

..., by the time we get there, we will have wasted an hour just sitting in traffic

You can also "spend time" doing something, similar to "take time" but indicating a more passive use of the time.

..., we are going to spend an extra hour in traffic.

This expression would not normally be expressed with the passive voice, and I don't see how to do it with "take time". But it is possible with "waste" or "spend":

If we don't leave by 4 pm, an hour will have been wasted by the time we get there.

If we don't leave by 4 pm, an hour will have been spent sitting in traffic.

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