Profligate means recklessly wasteful of money or resources. Profligate spending, profligate with energy, a profligate government.
It carries moral disapproval as well as financial, since the older sense meant dissolute in every way. The Latin means struck down or ruined, which is where the sense of a wasted life comes from.
1adjectiveprofligateRecklessly wasteful of money or resources.
“The profligate prince spent the royal fortune on horses, parties and palaces.”
profligate is a quality.
Latin profligatus means ruined or dissolute, from profligare, to strike down.
Proto-Indo-European
*per-
Latin
prōflīgātus
English, today
profligate
Built from
The adjective is first attested in 1535, the verb in 1542; Latin prōflīgātus, perfect passive participle of profligo (“to strike down, cast down”) (see -ate and pro-), from prō- (“forward”) + flīgō (“to strike, dash”) + -ō. Common participial usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA