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What is "profligate"

Crossword clues for profligate

profligate
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
profligate
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ profligate spending of the taxpayer's money
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Although the sources are not profligate with information, it is possible to reach a more differentiated picture.
▪ At a time when vast tracts were unsettled, it was all too easy for governments to be profligate.
▪ How can we make our use of praise discriminating and therefore meaningful, rather than profligate or ritualized?
▪ In her day at the parsonage the consumption of butter and eggs was not so profligate.
▪ The implication of this is that the more profligate councils will not be re-elected.
▪ This profligate recipe for survival is used by many animals of many kinds.
▪ Would not that be threatened only by the advent of a Labour Government, with their profligate spending plans?
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Profligate

Profligate \Prof"li*gate\, a. [L. profligatus, p. p. of profligare to strike or dash to the ground, to destroy; pro before + a word akin to fligere to strike. See Afflict.]

  1. Overthrown; beaten; conquered. [Obs.]

    The foe is profligate, and run.
    --Hudibras.

  2. Broken down in respect of rectitude, principle, virtue, or decency; openly and shamelessly immoral or vicious; dissolute; as, profligate man or wretch.

    A race more profligate than we.
    --Roscommon.

    Made prostitute and profligate muse.
    --Dryden.

    Syn: Abandoned; corrupt; dissolute; vitiated; depraved; vicious; wicked. See Abandoned.

Profligate

Profligate \Prof"li*gate\, n. An abandoned person; one openly and shamelessly vicious; a dissolute person. ``Such a profligate as Antony.''
--Swift.

Profligate

Profligate \Prof"li*gate\, v. t. To drive away; to overcome.

Note: [A Latinism] [Obs.]
--Harvey.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
profligate

1520s, "overthrown, routed" (now obsolete in this sense), from Latin profligatus "destroyed, ruined, corrupt, abandoned, dissolute," past participle of profligare "to cast down, defeat, ruin," from pro- "down, forth" (see pro-) + fligere "to strike" (see afflict). Main modern meaning "recklessly extravagant" is 1779, via notion of "ruined by vice" (1640s, implied in a use of profligation). Related: Profligately. As a noun from 1709.

Wiktionary
profligate

  1. 1 (context obsolete English) Overthrown, ruined. 2 Inclined to waste resources or behave extravagantly. 3 immoral; abandoned to vice. n. 1 An abandoned person; one openly and shamelessly vicious; a dissolute person. 2 An overly wasteful or extravagant individual. v

  2. (context obsolete English) To drive away; to overcome.

WordNet
profligate

  1. adj. recklessly wasteful; "prodigal in their expenditures" [syn: extravagant, prodigal, spendthrift]

  2. unrestrained by convention or morality; "Congreve draws a debauched aristocratic society"; "deplorably dissipated and degraded"; "riotous living"; "fast women" [syn: debauched, degenerate, degraded, dissipated, dissolute, libertine, riotous, fast]

profligate

  1. n. a dissolute man in fashionable society [syn: rake, rip, blood, roue]

  2. a recklessly extravagant consumer [syn: prodigal, squanderer]

Usage examples of "profligate".

If he must dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist better with the doctrines that now engross him.

Such was the promising state of my prospects when my evil genius brought to Madrid a native of Liege, Baron de Fraiture, chief huntsman of the principality, and a profligate, a gamester, and a cheat, like all those who proclaim their belief in his honesty nowadays.

Myself he considers a hardened profligate, and Miss Mannering a prime piece of Haymarket-ware.

Hebrew Prophets, in his terrible denunciations of the heartless manslayer, and the shameless, boastful profligate.

The children of drunkards, thieves, profligates, all suffer through the misdoings of their parents.

And this profligate cityscape is populated by characters--some met, some merely mentioned--with names equally evocative: Porphyria Levant, Estella Velvet, Brother Orphelin, Cerberus Cresset, Mavortian von Heber.

That spillage, that pond, was the most profligate consumption of resource possible, and the mad wondered at it, and called that reed-rimmed pool a mirage.

Ivan, the Squinter, ruled over his serfs with Oriental despotism: he was ignorant, coarse, and profligate.

The brows drew in, the black eyes hardened with a cold narrowing of mistrust: even before he spoke he saw she had read the story of his profligate extravagance, and that from that moment the hard propriety of her suspicious soul had been turned against him with that virtuous dislike which such people feel for unmoneyed men.

Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Gandia, had been ever an amiable profligate, a heedless voluptuary obeying no spur but that of his own pleasure, which should drive him now to his destruction.

The dark, unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid, inhuman Domitian, are condemned to everlasting infamy.

Europe, were drawn from the meanest, and very frequently from the most profligate, of mankind.

The servile and profligate youths whom Marcus had banished, soon regained their station and influence about the new emperor.

If he must dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist better with the doctrines that now engross him.

This young man seemed intended by nature for shameful excesses, for at the age of fourteen he was an accomplished profligate.