Extravagant is spending far more than makes sense, and letting it show. A bottle of wine that costs more than the meal, a wedding with fireworks and three cakes, a coat you cannot afford and did not need.
It covers the person, the habit and the thing bought: an extravagant host, extravagant tastes, an extravagant present. It leaves money behind just as easily and marks anything overdone — extravagant praise, extravagant claims about a face cream, an extravagant sweep of the arm. The noun is extravagance, and an extravaganza is a show built on the same principle. Lavish is the friendly version of this idea; extravagant comes with a small tut. And it belongs to the spender, not the price tag — a shop is expensive, the customer is extravagant.
1adjectiveextravagantSpending much more money than is sensible, in a way people notice.
“He was extravagant with money he did not have.”
synonyms: lavish, profligate
2adjectiveexcessiveGoing far beyond what is reasonable or believable.
“The advert made extravagant claims about what the cream could do.”
synonyms: excessive, exaggerated
Also accepted in games: lavish
Extravagant is Latin extra, beyond, joined to vagor, to wander or stray. The Medieval Latin extravagans described something that had strayed outside its proper limits, and the word came to English through Middle French. Spending extravagantly is money wandering off past the fence.
Latin
extra — beyond
Medieval Latin
extravagans
Middle French
extravagant
Middle English
extravagaunt
English, today
extravagant
Built from
Middle English extravagaunt, from Middle French extravagant and its etymon Medieval Latin extravagans, present participle of extravagor (“to wander beyond”), from Latin extra (“beyond”) + vagor (“to wander, stray”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA