Definition

1. Adjective:

   • Recklessly extravagant or wasteful: Characterized by spending money or resources in a wildly excessive and irresponsible manner.
   • Licentious, dissolute: Morally unrestrained, given to vice and debauchery; lacking moral restraint.

2. Noun:

   • A recklessly extravagant person: Someone who spends money or uses resources in a wildly wasteful way.
   • A dissolute, debauched person: An individual who leads a life of unrestrained indulgence in pleasure, often of a sensual nature.

Usage Examples

• Adjective:
  • The profligate heir squandered the family fortune on lavish parties and gambling.
  • The king's profligate lifestyle and disregard for his subjects led to revolution.
• Noun:
  • He was known as a profligate, more concerned with pleasure than with his duties.
  • The novel's antagonist is a charming but dangerous profligate.

Advanced Usage

• "Profligate with": Used to indicate what is being wasted or used excessively.
  • The government has been profligate with public funds.
• "Profligate in": Used to describe the area or manner of wastefulness.
  • He was profligate in his spending and profligate in his affections.

Variants and Related Words

• Profligacy (n): The quality or state of being profligate; reckless extravagance or wastefulness.
  • The profligacy of the regime was its ultimate downfall.
• Profligately (adv): In a profligate manner.
  • He lived profligately, with no thought for the future.

Synonyms

• Adjective (wasteful): Extravagant, spendthrift, prodigal, wasteful, improvident.
• Adjective (dissolute): Dissipated, debauched, decadent, licentious, libertine.
• Noun (spendthrift): Wastrel, spendthrift, squanderer.
• Noun (debauched person): Libertine, rake, debauchee, roué.

Antonyms

• Adjective (wasteful): Frugal, thrifty, economical, prudent, parsimonious.
• Adjective (dissolute): Abstinent, ascetic, moral, upright, virtuous.
• Noun: Miser, ascetic.

Related Idioms and Phrases

• "A profligate son": A common literary archetype referring to a son who wastes his inheritance.
  • In the parable, the profligate son returns home after wasting his fortune.
• "Profligate habits": A phrase describing a pattern of wasteful or dissolute behavior.
  • His profligate habits left him destitute by the age of forty.

Adjective

1. unrestrained by convention or morality
   • Congreve draws a debauched aristocratic society
   • deplorably dissipated and degraded
   • riotous living
   • fast women
2. recklessly wasteful
   • prodigal in their expenditures

Noun

1. a recklessly extravagant consumer
2. a dissolute man in fashionable society