▪ I. profligate, a. and n.
(ˈprɒflɪgət)
[ad. L. prōflīgāt-us overthrown, ruined; wretched, vile, dissolute, abandoned, pa. pple. of prōflīg-āre to dash to the ground, cast down, overthrow, overwhelm, ruin, dispatch, f. prō, pro-1 1 b + -flīg-āre for flīgĕre to strike down, dash.]
A. adj. I. † 1. (Const. as pa. pple.) Overthrown, overwhelmed, routed. (Cf. next, 1.) Obs.
| 1535 Legh & Rice Let. to Cromwell in Strype Eccl. Mem. (1721) I. App. lvii. 145 The Canon laws..with their Author, are profligate out of this realm. a 1548 Hall Chron., Hen. VI 168 By whiche onely pollicie, the kynges armie was profligate and dispersed. 1573 Reg. Privy Council Scot. II. 214 The conspiratouris..wer profligat and disapointit. 1643 Prynne Sov. Power Parlt. iii. 45. 1663 Butler Hud. i. iii. 728 The foe is profligate and run. |
II. 2. Abandoned to vice or vicious indulgence; recklessly licentious or debauched; dissolute; extremely or shamelessly vicious.
| 1647 Ward Simp. Cobler 39 When States are so reformed that they conforme such as are profligate into good civility: civill men, into religious morality. 1750 Johnson Rambler No. 77 ¶10 Profligate in their lives, and licentious in their compositions. 1782 Priestley Corrupt. Chr. I. i. 75 Paul, bishop of Samosata..said to have been of a profligate life. 1817 Jas. Mill Brit. India II. v. ix. 700 To corrupt the House of Commons into a profligate subservience to the views of the minister. 1849 Macaulay Hist. Eng. vi. II. 68 Sir Charles Sedley, one of the most brilliant and profligate wits of the Restoration. |
b. Recklessly prodigal, extravagant, or profuse.
| 1779 Sylph II. 129 Should I barter my soul to save one so profligate of his? 1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) V. 315 The utterly bad is in general profligate, and therefore poor. |
B. n. A profligate or dissipated person.
| 1709 Swift Adv. Relig. Wks. 1755 II. i. 99 Like a sort of compounding between virtue and vice, as if a woman were allowed to be vicious, provided she be not a profligate. 1796 H. Hunter tr. St.-Pierre's Stud. Nat. (1799) III. 394 Every profligate in the Country..they take care to wheedle over to strengthen their party. 1874 Green Short Hist. vii. §7. 420 The wretched profligate found himself again plunged into excesses. |
▪ II. profligate, v. Now rare or Obs.
(ˈprɒflɪgeɪt)
Also 6 pa. pple. profligat(e.
[f. L. prōflīgāt-, ppl. stem of prōflīgāre: see prec.]
1. trans. To overcome in battle or conflict, to overthrow, rout; to put to flight, chase away, dispel, disperse: a. persons (lit. and fig.).
| a 1548 Hall Chron., Hen. VI 165 b, I..which hath subuerted so many townes, and profligate and discomfited so many of them in open battayle. Ibid., Hen. VII 14 b, Hys armye should..profligate and expell all the intrudors and inuadours. 1646 H. Lawrence Comm. Angells 117 If you..stay not till the victory be gotten, till your enemy be profligated and abased. 1692 tr. Milton's Def. Pop. viii. M.'s Wks. 1851 VII. 193 You have not yet profligated the Pope quite. |
b. things (usually abstract, as evil, disease, error, etc.).
| 1542 Becon Christmas Banquet B vj, With how feruent herte should we profligate and chase awaye synne. 1624 Donne Serm. (ed. Alford) V. 274 When Christ is disseised and dispossessed, his Truth profligated and thrown out of a nation that professed it before. 1637 Brian Pisse-Proph. (1679) 134 To profligate your disease, and to reduce you to your former health. 1694 Salmon Bate's Dispens. i. (1713) 462/2 It so profligates the Humours which cause them, that it soon takes away those Diseases by the Roots. 1694 Motteux Rabelais v. (1737) 233 Profligating all Barbarity. 1845 Life St. Augustine xix. 195 A dignity..which (to use a forcible Latin word) ‘profligates’ calumny,—not merely wards it off, but routs, and explodes, and shames it. |
c. To overthrow, ruin, destroy; in quot. a 1661, to waste by reckless expenditure.
| 1643 Characters Richelieu 13 Peace by Sea and Land proffligated. a 1661 Fuller Worthies, Warwick. (1662) iii. 122 From his Profligating of the lands of his Bishoprick. |
d. To finish up, dispatch. rare.
| 1840 Fraser's Mag. XXI. 333 Dedicated to the glory of the exercitus maximus that profligated the German war in three months. |
† 2. refl. To abandon oneself to dissolute courses; to become profligate. Obs. rare—0.
| 1706 Phillips, To Profligate one's self, to give himself up to all manner of Vice, Lewdness and Debauchery. |