noun
definition
Careless wastefulness.
definition
Shameless and immoral behaviour.
Examples of profligacy in a Sentence
In Constantinople itself sedition and profligacy were rampant, the emperors were the tools of faction and cared but little for the interests of their subjects, whose lot was one of hopeless misery and depravity.
The ancient historians invariably note the profligacy of the inhabitants of Byzantium.
As a natural consequence of such licence, Munster was for twelve months a scene of unbridled profligacy.
The most important bill vetoed was the Dependent Pension Bill, a measure of extreme profligacy, opening the door, by the vagueness of its terms, to enormous frauds upon the treasury.
She is accused by Dio Cassius and Capitolinus of gross profligacy, and was reputed to have instigated the revolt of Avidius Cassius against her husband.
The shameless profligacy of the emperor's life was such as to shock even a Roman public. His popularity with the army declined, and Maesa, perceiving that the soldiers were in favour of Alexander Severus, persuaded Heliogabalus to raise his cousin to the dignity of Caesar (221), a step of which he soon repented.
Darnley was esteemed handsome, though his portraits give an opposite impression; his native qualities of cowardice, perfidy, profligacy and overweening arrogance were at first concealed, and in mid April 1565 Lethington was sent to London, not to renew the negotiations with Leicester (as had been designed till the 31st of March), but to announce Mary's intended wedding with her cousin.
Pomponius Atticus, was born about 102 B.C. He was aedile in 67, praetor in 62, and for the three following years propraetor in Asia, where, though he seems to have abstained from personal aggrandizement, his profligacy and ill-temper gained him an evil notoriety.
He died in 314, and was succeeded as scholarch by Polemon, whom he had reclaimed from a life of profligacy.
She's also hoping to deflect accusations of profligacy.
But Ibn Zobair refused, and the Medinians, of whom the majority probably had never before seen a prince's court, however simple, were only confirmed in their rancour against Yazid, and told many horrible tales about his profligacy, that he hunted and held wild orgies with Bedouin sheikhs, and had no religion.
Its prosperity, as also its profligacy, is attested by the New Testament, by Strabo and Pausanias.
He accordingly induced him to divorce Marcella and marry his daughter Julia (21), the widow of Marcellus, equally celebrated for her beauty and abilities and her shameless profligacy.
His extravagance, cruelty and profligacy can hardly be explained except on the assumption that he was out of his mind.
He now found a new friend in the Swiss adventurer, Francois Lefort, a shrewd and jovial rascal, who not only initiated him into all the mysteries of profligacy (at the large house built at Peter's expense in the German settlement), but taught him his true business as a ruler.
It is certain, from an entry by Pepys, that as early as 1666 he had established a character for vice and profligacy.
She was notorious for her profligacy, avarice and ambition, and exercised a complete ascendancy over her weak-minded husband, with the help of his all-powerful freedmen.
He achieved little success, but made himself detested by his insolence and profligacy, and was in turn replaced by Chares.
In spite of her talent for government she went far to hasten the empire's, downfall by her unbounded extravagance, and made the dynasty unpopular by her open profligacy, which went unpunished but for one short term of banishment.
There may have been an individual quality in her luxurious profligacy, but then her predecessors had not had the Roman lords of the world for wooers.
It shows how a bold and p lausible adventurer, aided by the profligacy of a parasite, the avarice and hypocrisy of a confessor, and a mother's complaisant familiarity with vice, achieves the triumph of making a gulled husband bring his own unwilling but too yielding wife to shame.
The accounts given by some writers as to the profligacy and immorality in the monasteries are grossly exaggerated.