What's the difference between profligate and spendthrift?

Profligate


Definition:

  • (a.) Overthrown; beaten; conquered.
  • (a.) Broken down in respect of rectitude, principle, virtue, or decency; openly and shamelessly immoral or vicious; dissolute; as, profligate man or wretch.
  • (n.) An abandoned person; one openly and shamelessly vicious; a dissolute person.
  • (v. t.) To drive away; to overcome.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But this is not to say that I do not have a working knowledge of true bedsitters - and yes, they do still exist, in spite of estate agents' profligate use of the term 'studio flat'.
  • (2) But it relies too much on the myth that booms enrich everyone, a myth easily exposed by pointing out that under that supposedly profligate Labour administration, now accused of recklessly taking from the rich and giving to the poor, the gap between the richest and the poorest didn't narrow.
  • (3) "With a 53 per cent increase in energy consumption forecast by 2035, those who are commercially savvy will recognise that in a resource poor future, we cannot be captured by a profligate economic model from the past.
  • (4) Reasonable use” sounds … well, reasonable, but a “use it or lose it” clause incentivizes profligate use: if you don’t use your historic water allocation in a beneficial way, you forfeit your water rights, Gray said.
  • (5) The coalition succeeded an unbelievably profligate government that took state spending from 34% of GDP to over 45% in a decade .
  • (6) Other critics say low water prices are the culprits as they result in profligate water use and low investment in water-efficient infrastructure.
  • (7) All the debt ceiling ends up becoming is a political football used by the opposition party to suggest the government are profligate spenders.
  • (8) He believes that Osborne's decision to veto the measures in February shows that the Tories want to put spending cuts ahead of tackling child poverty as he seeks to depict Labour as profligate.
  • (9) The credit crunch hit, which might have been terminal to a project so palpably of the profligate boom years, but then the cavalry appeared, in the form of the property arm of the ruling family of Qatar.
  • (10) Thatcherism liked to present itself as a rejection of the postwar, state-driven, more profligate way of doing things.
  • (11) There is no reason why a constitutional solution that involves debt limitation should not command a large measure of public acceptance, especially in debtor countries, which have experienced the political and economic damage caused by previous profligate governments.
  • (12) In Brussels, right-of-centre German economists, who until recently dominated the European Central Bank's main decision-making board, lobbied for a "can't-pay, won't-pay" stance towards southern European countries seen as profligate spenders who need to understand the moral hazard of raising their living standards on a mountain of debt.
  • (13) The latest shock wave has served to ram home the reality that this remains first of all a crisis of the banks and the private sector – not, as the British government would have it, of profligate governments and public debt, which only ballooned to fill the gap left by market failure.
  • (14) Election officials have also disqualified Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, the man who until just a few weeks ago was the country's prime minister, under articles ensuring candidates are, among many other things, "sagacious, righteous and non-profligate".
  • (15) As inspectors from Brussels demanded answers this week from the Spanish government about how it plans to bring profligate regional governments under control, senior officials admitted they were clueless as to the real size of the debt in the biggest region – party-loving Andalucía.
  • (16) "People have far more confidence in Britain than in many other western countries who have got into trouble through profligate economic policies," he said.
  • (17) London, which has less annual rainfall than cities such as Athens and Sydney, is classed as "seriously water-stressed" by the Environment Agency , but critics of the Beckton plant – including former mayor of London Ken Livingstone – told the inquiry that desalination was energy-profligate, unnecessary and unsustainable.
  • (18) More and more people feel the gap between the profligate promises of individual freedom and sovereignty, and the incapacity of their political and economic organisations to realise them.
  • (19) His party has no members of parliament, a situation unlikely to change at the next election, and offers promiscuous and profligate policies that add up to errant nonsense as a platform for government.
  • (20) That debacle shows the Conservatives as being as profligate as sailors on shore leave.

Spendthrift


Definition:

  • (n.) One who spends money profusely or improvidently; a prodigal; one who lavishes or wastes his estate. Also used figuratively.
  • (a.) Prodigal; extravagant; wasteful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Baelish's talent is for keeping his spendthrift master in cash.
  • (2) Berlin has ignored the pleas of the OECD, IMF and its allies in Paris and Rome, believing that such a solution would only worsen the spendthrift ways of their southern neighbours.
  • (3) I’ve never been much of a spendthrift, never really spent on holidays, cars or things like that.
  • (4) Johnson is the latest in a long line of politicians charged with the funding of academic research who thinks it needs to prove its worth in advance; that highly educated people working hard to fill the gaps in human knowledge never got us anywhere, and what those spendthrift boffins need to do is direct their research towards a readily monetisable goal.
  • (5) It would bring down to earth the spendthrift populism of Salmond's nationalists, probably lose them the next election and damage the cause of full independence.
  • (6) She is nobody's idea of a spendthrift, happily chucking money in the direction of the undeserving poor.
  • (7) Wilders argued Rutte was insulting a million voters by excluding him from the negotiations in advance and accused his rivals of being “liars and spendthrifts”.
  • (8) He believes this change in behaviour marks a long-term shift from the spendthrift habits of the boom to a savings culture.
  • (9) While the president stuffs his bank accounts and his spendthrift son fritters away a fortune on flash cars, more than half his people lack access to safe water, child survival rates are reportedly falling and numbers of children receiving primary education dropping.
  • (10) It was a system that ensured waste by rewarding the most profligate spendthrifts in a system specifically engineered to waste the band’s money.
  • (11) When combined with the borrowing accumulated by our bloated banking sector and spendthrift consumers before the bubble burst, the UK's debt burden is world-beating.
  • (12) The problem is not that we lack self-reliance, or that we are spendthrifts.
  • (13) Then there's the culture that makes Germans the biggest savers and most reluctant spenders, encouraging national stereotypes about the thrifty and the spendthrift, the scroungers and the stingy.
  • (14) Thus I enjoy the spendthrift distinction of having purchased four Xbox 360 consoles in three years, having abandoned the first to the care of a friend in Brooklyn, left another floating around Europe with parties unknown, and stranded another with a pal in Tallinn (to the irritation of his girlfriend).
  • (15) This is one of those rare times when the lazy, spendthrift way of doing things really is best: you need to go to the garden centre at the earliest opportunity and buy plants that are big enough to harvest immediately.
  • (16) Acting on that without the clunking fist of across-the-board interest rate rises would be admirably surgical, since this way the residents of Kingston upon Hull are not punished for the spendthrift house buying of Kingston upon Thames.
  • (17) Dickens, having known real poverty in childhood and seen his father imprisoned for debt, was very careful with money all his life, drove fierce bargains with publishers, and featured many foolish spendthrifts in his books including Mr Micawber who also lands in a debtors’ prison.
  • (18) Judging by today's great quango cull , hacking back the unloved tentacles of a supposedly bloated, spendthrift state has proved neither as easy nor as lucrative as hoped.
  • (19) The determination to cut budget deficits in these circumstances does not show that policymakers of probity and integrity have replaced the irresponsible spendthrifts of 2008 and 2009.
  • (20) She told the Observer that she was wary of becoming a "monster" because of her success and of being a spendthrift.