profligate

comparative more profligate · superlative most profligate

1. Inclined to waste resources or behave extravagantly.

   Jay Rodriguez headed over and Dani Osvaldo might have done better with only David De Gea to beat and, as Southampton bordered on the profligate, United were far more ruthless.

   2013 October 19, Ben Smith, BBC Sport

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   [H]er Reputation—That—I have no Reaſon to believe is in Queſtion—But then hovv long her profligate Courſe of Pleaſures may make her able to keep it—is a ſhocking Queſtion! and her Preſumption VVhile ſhe keeps it—inſupportable!

   1728, John Vanbrugh, Colley Cibber, The Provok’d Husband; or, A Journey to London. A Comedy, […], London: […] J[ohn] Watts, […], →OCLC, Act I, page 1

   His undignified and profligate exile—needy suitor to-day to the only heiress of the royal French blood, and to-morrow to one of the nieces of the Italian adventurer, Mazarin. Utterly neglectful of what he owes to the kingdom which he hopes to regain, Charles has learned but adversity's worst lesson—expediency.

   1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 258

   This luxury-loving and profligate shell company is registered at a betting shop on the Caledonian Road, an unlovely thoroughfare in North London on which you'd be more likely to find amphetamines than a top-notch lawyer.

   2018, Oliver Bullough, chapter 4, in Moneyland, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 65

   Synonyms: extravagant, wasteful, prodigal, extravagant, improvident, imprudent, lavish, loose-handed

2. Immoral; abandoned to vice.

   Made prostitute and profligate the muse.

   1685, John Dryden, To The Pious Memory of the Accomplish'd Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew

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   Time ſenſibly all things impairs; / Our fathers have been worſe than theirs; / And we than ours; next age will ſee / A race more profligate than we / (With all the pains we take) have ſkill enough to be.

   a. 1686, Earl of Roscommon [i.e., Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon]; Samuel Johnson, “The Sixth Ode of the Third Book of Horace”, in The Works of the English Poets. With Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, […], volumes X (The Poems of Rochester, Roscommon, and Yalden), London: […] E. Cox; for C. Bathurst, […], published 1779, page 257, →OCLC

   Synonyms: immoral, licentious

3. adjectiveparticipleOverthrown, ruined.

   The foe is profligate, and run.

   1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1905, →OCLC

plural profligates

1. An abandoned person; one openly and shamelessly vicious; a dissolute person.

   Have you come to Nelson seeking your death, profligate?

   2010 October 19, Obsidian Entertainment, Fallout: New Vegas, Bethesda Softworks, level/area: Nelson

2. An overly wasteful or extravagant individual.

   He proposed to call witnesses to show how the prisoner, a profligate and spendthrift, had been at the end of his financial tether, and had also been carrying on an intrigue with a certain Mrs. Raikes, a neighbouring farmer’s wife.

   1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 152

   Synonyms: wastrel, big spender, dingthrift, neve, overspender, prodigal, saprophage, scattergood

present singular third person profligates · participle present profligating · participle past profligated · past profligated

1. obsoleteTo drive away; to overcome.

   Such a stipulation would remove one powerful temptation to profligate pennyless seducers, of whom there are too many prowling in the higher circles ;

   1840, Alexander Walker, Woman Physiologically Considered as to Mind, Morals, Marriage, Matrimonial Slavery, Infidelity and Divorce, page 157

1. obsoleteObsolete form of profligated (past participle of profligate): profligated: routed, overcome, driven away.

   By whiche onely policie, the kynges armie was profligate and dispersed.

   1548, Edward Hall, Hall's Chronicle (Hall's Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and Yorke), Henry VI. 168

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   The Canon laws […] with their Author, are profligate out of this realm.

   1535, Thomas Legh and John Prise, Letter to Cromwell (in John Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials (1721)), I. App. lvii. 145