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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Extravagance

Extravagance \Ex*trav"a*gance\, n. [Cf. F. extravagance. See Extravagant, and cf. Extravaganza.]

  1. A wandering beyond proper limits; an excursion or sally from the usual way, course, or limit.

  2. The state of being extravagant, wild, or prodigal beyond bounds of propriety or duty; want of moderation; excess; especially, undue expenditure of money; vaid and superfluous expense; prodigality; as, extravagance of anger, love, expression, imagination, demands.

    Some verses of my own, Maximin and Almanzor, cry vengeance on me for their extravagance.
    --Dryden.

    The income of three dukes was enough to supply her extravagance.
    --Arbuthnot.

    Syn: Wildness; irregularity; excess; prodigality; profusion; waste; lavishness; unreasonableness; recklessness.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
extravagance

1640s, "an extravagant act," from French extravagance, from Late Latin extravagantem (see extravagant). Specifically of wasteful spending from 1727. Meaning "quality of being extravagant" is from 1670s. Extravagancy, "a wandering," especially "a wandering from the usual course," is attested from c.1600, now rare.

Wiktionary
extravagance

n. 1 excessive or superfluous expenditure of money. 2 prodigality as in '''extravagance''' of anger, love, expression, imagination, or demands.

WordNet
extravagance
  1. n. the quality of exceeding the appropriate limits of decorum or probability or truth; "we were surprised by the extravagance of his description" [syn: extravagancy]

  2. the trait of spending extravagantly [syn: prodigality, profligacy]

  3. excessive spending [syn: prodigality, lavishness, highlife, high life]

Wikipedia
Extravagance (film)

Extravagance is a 1930 American film directed by Phil Rosen and released by Tiffany Pictures.

Extravagance (1919 film)

Extravagance is a 1919 American silent drama film directed by Victor Schertzinger and written by John Lynch and R. Cecil Smith. The film stars Dorothy Dalton, Charles Clary, J. Barney Sherry, Donald MacDonald, and Philo McCullough. The film was released on March 16, 1919, by Paramount Pictures.

Extravagance (1916 film)

Extravagance is a 1916 silent film comedy-drama directed by Burton L. King and based on a play by Aaron Hoffman. It stars Olga Petrova sometimes billed as Madame Olga Petrova. Produced by Popular Plays and Players, it was distributed through Metro Pictures.

Usage examples of "extravagance".

Through the absurd extravagances of poets and augurs, and through the growth of critical thought, this unbelief went on increasing from the days of Anaxagoras, when it was death to call the sun a ball of fire, to the days of Catiline, when Julius Casar could be chosen Pontifex Maximus, almost before the Senate had ceased to reverberate his voice openly asserting that death was the utter end of man.

Elagabalus lavished away the treasures of his people in the wildest extravagance, his own voice and that of his flatterers applauded a spirit of magnificence unknown to the tameness of his predecessors.

It pleased him to set himself outside it, with his little vices and extravagances, as a queer fellow or a genius, but he never had his domicile in those provinces of life where the bourgeoisie had ceased to exist.

Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labors in exposing its falsehood and extravagance, they are obliged to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or the wit of Lucian.

We go to one of the deepest sub-levels of the Extravagance Building, where there is a special hyperoxygenated pool, for the use of beginners only, circular in shape and not at all deep.

In the collection he parodies some of the naive but popular futurological scenarios, while hypothesizing on ideas whose extravagance extends beyond the scope of contemporary scientific theories.

Moreover, the peculiar mannered affectation of his speech was so studied that it hardly escaped extravagance.

Philosophy directed by metaphysics ends in visionary extravagance, 693-m.

Jones, on the contrary, whose character was on the outside of generosity, and may perhaps not very unjustly have been suspected of extravagance, without any hesitation gave a guinea in exchange for the book.

His expression was as simple as resentment without understanding can be: now like plesiosaurus laboring all four limbs for the paddles they were, lifting a small head to see pterodactyl raise its absurd body on more absurd wings and with cumbrous scaling gain the sky, a ridiculous place to be, certainly, but for that moment he watched, disconcerting to plesiosaurus, to whom no such extravagance had ever occurred and who, by no feat of skill or imagination, could hope to accomplish it now.

The extravagance of the Grecian mythology proclaimed, with a clear and audible voice, that the pious inquirer, instead of being scandalized or satisfied with the literal sense, should diligently explore the occult wisdom, which had been disguised, by the prudence of antiquity, under the mask of folly and of fable.

The Salmagundi pointed to the massive structure of gothic extravagance in creamy yellow stone that had replaced the Apollo shrine.

The freshness and audacity of that imagination, and the beautiful extravagance of that speech, a speech modulated to a rhythm that Synge was the first to catch, are in themselves enough to give distinction to almost any subject.

A bespectacled pilgrim seized a beef sandwich between his teeth so he could page through a trailside reference book, and the oblivious, easy extravagance of that soon galled a hungry woman.

He wrote to Lizzie, inconsequential letters with formal endearments, and received volumes of gossipy pages in response, filled with trivia about Florence, and The Forks, and the extravagances of her mother.