spendthrift

Etymology

spend + thrift (“(archaic) savings; profits; wealth”).

adj

1. Improvident, profligate, or wasteful.
   Wel, go to wild oats, ſpend thrift prodigal, / Ile croſſe thy name quight from my reckning booke: / For theſe accounts, faith it ſhall ſcath thee ſome what, / I will not ſay what, ſomewhat it ſhall be. 1621, attributed to Thomas Heywood or John Cooke, A Pleasant Conceited Comedy, wherein is Shewed, how a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad. As It hath been Sundry Times Acted by the Earle of Worcesters Seruants, London: Printed [by Thomas Purfoot] for Mathew Law, and are to be sold at his shop in Paules church yard, neere vnto S. Augustines gate, at the signe of the Foxe, →OCLC
   Powerful feelings and generous designs are, alas! too like the inheritance of a miser in the hands of some spendthrift heir—lavished away on trifles in our early years, and needed, but not posessed, in our riper age. 1831, [George Payne Rainsford James], chapter II, in Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms. … In Three Volumes, volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, →OCLC, page 33
   Billie Burke's career and life often twined together in this manner – so many of her roles called on her to play parts that were fragments of her real life: the sought-after young stage beauty, the wronged wife, the spendthrift matriarch of bankrupt wealth, the woman too old to be acting so young. 2009, Grant Hayter-Menzies, “Preface”, in Mrs. Ziegfield: The Public and Private Lives of Billie Burke, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, page 3
2. Extravagant or lavish.
   A high-powered entertainment that acceded to the spiraling capitalization costs of the big musical with a production of spendthrift command, La Cage [aux Folles] came in at summer's end as a guaranteed hit. 2004, Ethan Mordden, “The Great Tradition”, in The Happiest Corpse I’ve Ever Seen: The Last Twenty-five Years of the Broadway Musical, New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, page 6
   This feels like a significant league title in more ways than one. It is now 14 years since Roman Abramovich emerged as an spendthrift presence in west London. 13 May 2017, Barney Ronay, “Antonio Conte’s brilliance has turned Chelsea’s pop-up team into champions”, in The Guardian, London, archived from the original on 2017-09-09

noun

1. Someone who spends money improvidently or wastefully.
   [T]emperate people choose neither total abstinence nor perpetual indulgence, but something in between; liberal people are neither spendthrifts nor misers; the properly angry are neither apathetic nor short-tempered; and the strictly just person distributes to everyone what is his or her due, neither more nor less. 1999, Warren G. Bovée, “Democratic Promise, Democratic Reality, and the Journalists”, in Discovering Journalism (Contributions to the Study of Mass Media and Communications; no. 56), Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISSN, pages 79–80
2. (figurative) Anything that distributes its attributes profusely, without restraint.