Word of the DayFriday, April 07, 2000
profligate
\PROF-luh-guht; -gayt\ , adjective:1.
Openly and shamelessly immoral; dissipated; dissolute.
2.
Recklessly wasteful.
1.
A profligate person.
Quotes:
Both Curtiss and Feldmar agreed that after the birth of Bruno the couple grew less happy and that there was a good deal of squabbling caused, apparently, by the father's profligate ways and infidelities.
-- Arthur Lennig, Stroheim
Life had to be challenged, attacked every instant, with reckless speed in a Ferrari, with profligate spending, with unrestrained sexuality, with artistic ambitions as monumental as they were impractical.
-- Tag Gallagher, The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini
For in so many ways we seem at times to be "a nation of public puritans and private profligates."
-- Tracy Lee Simmons, "Steinbeck Reconsidered", National Review, March 25, 2002
If this were not the case, we would all end up as either misers or profligates.
-- "What matters, what doesn't?", Investors Chronicle, May 2, 2003
Origin:
Profligate derives from the past participle of Latin profligatus, from profligare, to strike or fling forward, hence to the ground, from pro-, forward + fligere, to strike down.
