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Monday October 13, 2003

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profligate \PROF-luh-guht; -gayt\ , adjective:
1. Openly and shamelessly immoral; dissipated; dissolute.
2. Recklessly wasteful.

noun:
1. A profligate person.

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

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.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for profligate

 

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