profligate

Etymology

From Latin prōflīgātus (“wretched, abandoned”), participle of prōflīgō (“strike down, cast down”), from pro (“forward”) + fligere (“to strike, dash”).

adj

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. 19 October 2013, Ben Smith, BBC Sport
   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, page 65
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
   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
3. (obsolete) Overthrown, ruined.

noun

1. An abandoned person; one openly and shamelessly vicious; a dissolute person.
   Have you come to Nelson seeking your death, profligate? 19 October 2010, Obsidian Entertainment, Fallout: New Vegas, Bethesda Softworks, level/area: Nelson
2. An overly wasteful or extravagant individual.

verb

1. (obsolete) To 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