profligate

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But her husband was profligate, and he wasted her substance.

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Definitions (15)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Given over to dissipation; dissolute.
  2. adjective Recklessly wasteful; wildly extravagant.
  3. noun A profligate person; a wastrel.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (5)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (4)

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Examples (50)

  • There's a great injustice in it, but the prudent and the profligate are all in this together. —  Personal finance and money news, analysis and comment | guardian.co.uk
  • I would take the play out of the hands of the base and profligate, and give it to those who are virtuous and true. —  The Bobbin Boy or, How Nat Got His learning
  • Then there are one or two stories of him in the great country houses--at Bubb Dodington's where he met Dr. Young and disputed with him upon the episode of Sin and Death in Paradise Lost with such vigour that at last Young burst out with the couplet You are so witty, profligate, and thin At once we think you Milton, Death, and Sin and at Blenheim, where the old Duchess of Marlborough hoped to lure him into helping her with her decocted memoirs, until she found that he had scruples, when in a fury she snatched the papers out of his hands. —  Books and Characters French and English
  • None but a profligate, a sensualist, a ruffian, could disbelieve. —  Jane Talbot
  • God's goodness brought back from a profligate, a highwayman, and a robber. —  The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
 

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Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

licentious ·  unprincipled ·  deprave ·  corrupt ·  wicked ·  lawless ·  ungrateful ·  frivolous ·  lewd ·  tyrannical ·  shameless ·  rapacious
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin prōflīgātus, past participle of prōflīgāre, to ruin, cast down : prō-, forward; see pro-1 + -flīgāre, intensive of flīgere, to strike down.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Latin profligatus, past participle of profligare (later Spanish Portuguese profligar), dash to the ground, overthrow, ruin, destroy, from pro, forth, forward, + fligere, strike, dash: see blow.
  2. from Latin profligatus, overthrown, abandoned, wretched, vile, past participle of profligare, overthrow, ruin: see profligate, v.
 

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/ˈprɑflɪgət/
by American Heritage

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