spendthrift

spendthrift, prodigal, profligate, waster, wastrel are comparable when they denote a person who dissipates his resources foolishly and wastefully. All are more or less pejorative terms but they may differ significantly in emphasis and application. Spendthrift and prodigal are the most nearly neutral terms and in themselves, as apart from context, carry little suggestion of moral obliquity; they are, however, the members of the group with specific legal applications and are generally applicable when the basic notion is one of unwise and wasteful expenditure usually of material resources (as wages, wealth, or property).

Spendthrift stresses lack of prudence in spending and usually implies imbalance between income and outgo rather than lavishness

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to spendthrifts . . . there is only one limit to their fortune,—that of time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of Rome until they are spent— Stevenson

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a spendthrift is a man . . . who saves nothing, spends fifty-eight cents of every dollar on living expenses, forty cents on recreation and one centçach on education and alms— Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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In legal and quasi-legal use the term implies such expenditure in relation to income and resources as are likely to leave the spendthrift and his dependents public charges.

Prodigal (compare prodigal adj under PROFUSE) is more likely to suggest such lavish expenditure as can deplete the most abundant resources

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this royal prodigal, lavishing the nation's wealth on palaces and parks while the people starved

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the Irish produce great writers because they're temperamentally prodigals—they're willing to squander their lives on the gratuitous work that great art demands— Edmund Wilson

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In legal and quasi-legal use the term applies specifically to one held legally incompetent to manage his property or to incur debts because of demonstrated incapacity to avoid foolish dissipation of property. While profligate may imply the habits of a spendthrift, it is more likely to stress such extravagant, even vicious expenditure of one's personal powers (as of mind and body) that mere economic waste becomes a secondary matter; characteristically it suggests the utmost of debauchery and dissoluteness

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they were not cautious schemers, husbanding their resources. Julius Caesar was a notorious profligate, who piled up enormous debts— Inge

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the wretched profligate found himself again plunged into excesses— J. R. Green

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Waster often comes very close to spendthrift in meaning, but it carries a stronger implication of worthlessness than does the former word. It often suggests the habits of a loafer or never-do-well but it is sometimes applied to men of inherited wealth who spend their lives in idleness or in frivolities

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he who will not work, must . . . leave the town, as they will not sweat themselves for an healthy, idle waster— Adair

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the palaces and pleasure seats of the plutocrats are used for the recreation of workers instead of for the enervation of extravagant wasters— Shaw

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they're a bunch of wasters. All they do ... is just dance and chatter and show off their clothes— Sinclair Lewis

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Wastrel, though it often implies the wasting of money and other resources, more often is applied to a good-for-nothing, whether young or old, especially to one who is a drain upon the community; the prevailing implication is that of dis- reputableness

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if we are to avoid the danger of so shaping them that they shall be mere mechanisms in working hours and mere wastrels in the rest— Grand gent

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even allowing for a large element of intentional exaggeration... there remains the basic fact that ... we have the expression of the twisted psyche of an embittered, penniless wastrel— R.A.Hall

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