How to Use profligate in a Sentence

profligate

adjective
Definition of profligatenext
Synonyms for profligatenext
  • She was very profligate in her spending.
  • But that runs the risk that the prudent pay for the profligate.
    — The Economist, 1 Feb. 2018
  • This is not to say Mr. McLean’s clients are profligate.
    — Devin Gordon, New York Times, 6 June 2019
  • The price tag probably isn’t what gave the profligate Trump pause.
    — Benjamin Hart, Daily Intelligencer, 6 Mar. 2018
  • Part of the problem was that a fireplace was a profligate way to heat a house, since so much heat vanished up the chimney.
    — Clive Thompson, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 July 2022
  • Though the size of the new budget is profligate, the intent of this fiscal efforts is not wrong-headed.
    — Paul Swartz, Fortune, 27 Sep. 2022
  • The Schuyler mansion was a house of horrors for slaves, yet his profligate daughters, and Hamilton, went along with it.
    — Ishmael Reed, Harper's Magazine, 15 Sep. 2020
  • Peerless on the soccer pitch, Mr. Maradona was profligate and profane off it.
    — Liz Clarke, Washington Post, 25 Nov. 2020
  • Price has for years cast himself as a deficit hawk, determined to save the country from its profligate ways.
    — Gregory Krieg, CNN, 29 Sep. 2017
  • The men were serious about their work, and perhaps even about their fishing, but profligate in their leisure-time habits.
    — Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 5 Sep. 2023
  • Don’t stop until killing a Jew becomes too expensive for even the rich and profligate man.
    — David L. Ulin, latimes.com, 8 Sep. 2017
  • That the slur cuck casts white men as victims aligns with the dicta of whiteness, which seek to alchemize one’s profligate sins into virtue.
    — Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, 7 Sep. 2017
  • Brown cops to becoming a profligate spender in a company full of them, which brings us to one of the many economics lessons within his book.
    — John Tamny, Forbes, 18 May 2022
  • What Smith knew of Shin's background as a dodgy business partner—or the extent of his profligate spending in Vegas—is tough to discern.
    — James Vlahos, GQ, 18 Apr. 2018
  • Obama is the most profligate deficit & debt spender in our nation’s history.
    — Washington Post, 25 Oct. 2019
  • The extravagance of these offerings lay not in spectacle but in the profligate use of time.
    — Molly Fischer, The New Yorker, 19 Sep. 2022
  • The problem is, short of turning off neighborhood taps, there are few effective ways to cut off profligate users.
    — Aryn Baker, TIME.com, 8 Feb. 2018
  • The state’s profligate spender-in-chief believes money thrown to key constituencies may quench the rage of millions of voters who want to remove him from office.
    — Lance Christensen, National Review, 14 May 2021
  • One day in the pristine country’s zero-tolerance would scare straight the most profligate Wawa-bag tosser.
    — Ronnie Polaneczky, Philly.com, 2 Mar. 2018
  • Her profligate spending continued through the late 2000s, at the same as the country's economy went into free fall.
    — Farai Sevenzo and Tara John, CNN, 6 Sep. 2019
  • The former West Ham youth product can be profligate in front of goal, but that didn't stop him from scoring twice against Padania and bagging the Cypriots' only goal of the game the last time these two met, in the group stage.
    — SI.com, 8 June 2018
  • Being outside of the EU’s corrective procedures doesn’t mean Greece can go back to its profligate ways.
    — Raf Casert, The Seattle Times, 12 July 2017
  • There are plenty of reasons to cut the Pentagon’s budget, but its track record of profligate spending is among the most obvious.
    — Elliott Negin, Scientific American, 14 Sep. 2020
  • Even so, what can be said is that Americans are hardly being profligate.
    — Justin Lahart, WSJ, 18 Jan. 2023
  • And Congress has been using the excuse to support more profligate spending, by saying that the experts at the Fed don't see inflation risks.
    — Bryan Rich, Forbes, 4 May 2021
  • As always with Östlund, his most profligate flights of fancy tack close enough to reality to ring queasily true.
    — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, 12 Oct. 2022
  • The chickens are coming home to roost at profligate startup investor SoftBank Group.
    — Adam Lashinsky, Fortune, 23 Mar. 2020
  • This time, though, the damage was not caused by profligate spending but by an unforeseen global health crisis.
    — John Ainger, Bloomberg.com, 28 Apr. 2020
  • Depp is far from the only star who has behaved in an entitled, boorish or profligate manner.
    — Brent Lang, Variety, 31 May 2022
  • That was the year, of course, of Too Big to Fail, when many of the most powerful and profligate banks and trading firms were saved from ruin for the sake of keeping the global economy operating.
    — Noam Cohen, Wired, 29 Jan. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'profligate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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