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profligacy, profligate - vocabulary

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  Ed Good  —  Grammar Tips
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noun

Profligacy: the trait of spending lavishly or extravagantly; unrestrained indulgence in sensual pleasure.

adjective

Profligate: characterized by wild spending or by engaging in sensual pleasure; as a noun, the person so characterized, a wastrel.

Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.

—Barbara Ehrenreich ”Food Worship” The Worst Years of Our Lives (1985)

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