| 释义 |
▪ I. profligate, a. and n.|ˈprɒflɪgət|
[ad. L. prōflīgāt-us overthrown, ruined; wretched, vile, dissolute, abandoned, pa. pple. of prōflīg-āre to dash to the ground, cast down, overthrow, overwhelm, ruin, dispatch, f. prō, pro-1 1 b + -flīg-āre for flīgĕre to strike down, dash.]
A. adj.
I.
†1. (Const. as pa. pple.) Overthrown, overwhelmed, routed. (Cf. next, 1.) Obs.
1535Legh & Rice Let. to Cromwell in Strype Eccl. Mem. (1721) I. App. lvii. 145 The Canon laws..with their Author, are profligate out of this realm. a1548Hall Chron., Hen. VI 168 By whiche onely pollicie, the kynges armie was profligate and dispersed. 1573Reg. Privy Council Scot. II. 214 The conspiratouris..wer profligat and disapointit. 1643Prynne Sov. Power Parlt. iii. 45. 1663 Butler Hud. i. iii. 728 The foe is profligate and run.
II.
2. Abandoned to vice or vicious indulgence; recklessly licentious or debauched; dissolute; extremely or shamelessly vicious.
1647Ward Simp. Cobler 39 When States are so reformed that they conforme such as are profligate into good civility: civill men, into religious morality. 1750Johnson Rambler No. 77 ⁋10 Profligate in their lives, and licentious in their compositions. 1782Priestley Corrupt. Chr. I. i. 75 Paul, bishop of Samosata..said to have been of a profligate life. 1817Jas. Mill Brit. India II. v. ix. 700 To corrupt the House of Commons into a profligate subservience to the views of the minister. 1849Macaulay Hist. Eng. vi. II. 68 Sir Charles Sedley, one of the most brilliant and profligate wits of the Restoration.
b. Recklessly prodigal, extravagant, or profuse.
1779Sylph II. 129 Should I barter my soul to save one so profligate of his? 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) V. 315 The utterly bad is in general profligate, and therefore poor.
B. n. A profligate or dissipated person.
1709Swift Adv. Relig. Wks. 1755 II. i. 99 Like a sort of compounding between virtue and vice, as if a woman were allowed to be vicious, provided she be not a profligate. 1796H. Hunter tr. St.-Pierre's Stud. Nat. (1799) III. 394 Every profligate in the Country..they take care to wheedle over to strengthen their party. 1874Green Short Hist. vii. §7. 420 The wretched profligate found himself again plunged into excesses.
▪ II. profligate, v. Now rare or Obs.|ˈprɒflɪgeɪt|
Also 6 pa. pple. profligat(e.
[f. L. prōflīgāt-, ppl. stem of prōflīgāre: see prec.]
1. trans. To overcome in battle or conflict, to overthrow, rout; to put to flight, chase away, dispel, disperse:
a. persons (lit. and fig.).
a1548Hall Chron., Hen. VI 165 b, I..which hath subuerted so many townes, and profligate and discomfited so many of them in open battayle. Ibid., Hen. VII 14 b, Hys armye should..profligate and expell all the intrudors and inuadours. 1646H. Lawrence Comm. Angells 117 If you..stay not till the victory be gotten, till your enemy be profligated and abased. 1692tr. Milton's Def. Pop. viii. M.'s Wks. 1851 VII. 193 You have not yet profligated the Pope quite.
b. things (usually abstract, as evil, disease, error, etc.).
1542Becon Christmas Banquet B vj, With how feruent herte should we profligate and chase awaye synne. 1624Donne Serm. (ed. Alford) V. 274 When Christ is disseised and dispossessed, his Truth profligated and thrown out of a nation that professed it before. 1637Brian Pisse-Proph. (1679) 134 To profligate your disease, and to reduce you to your former health. 1694Salmon Bate's Dispens. i. (1713) 462/2 It so profligates the Humours which cause them, that it soon takes away those Diseases by the Roots. 1694Motteux Rabelais v. (1737) 233 Profligating all Barbarity. 1845Life St. Augustine xix. 195 A dignity..which (to use a forcible Latin word) ‘profligates’ calumny,—not merely wards it off, but routs, and explodes, and shames it.
c. To overthrow, ruin, destroy; in quot. a 1661, to waste by reckless expenditure.
1643Characters Richelieu 13 Peace by Sea and Land proffligated. a1661Fuller Worthies, Warwick. (1662) iii. 122 From his Profligating of the lands of his Bishoprick.
d. To finish up, dispatch. rare.
1840Fraser's Mag. XXI. 333 Dedicated to the glory of the exercitus maximus that profligated the German war in three months.
†2. refl. To abandon oneself to dissolute courses; to become profligate. Obs. rare—0.
1706Phillips, To Profligate one's self, to give himself up to all manner of Vice, Lewdness and Debauchery. |