Spendthrift

A spendthrift (also called profligate) is someone who spends money prodigiously and who is extravagant and recklessly wasteful, often to a point where the spending climbs well beyond his or her means. The word derives from an obsolete sense of the word "thrift" to mean prosperity rather than frugality, so that a "spendthrift" is one who has spent their prosperity.

Historical figures who have been characterized as spendthrifts include Karl Marx,George IV of Great Britain,King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and Marie Antoinette the Queen of France.

The term is often used by the press as an adjective applied to governments who are thought to be wasting public money.

While the pair of words may seem to imply the opposite of its meaning (as if you are thrifty in your spending), it follows the tradition of the earlier word "scattergood", the first part being an undoing of the second.

William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (1732–33) displays in a series of paintings the spiralling fortunes of a wealthy but spendthrift son and heir who loses his money, and who as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bedlam.

The modern legal remedy for spendthrifts is usually bankruptcy. However, during the 19th and 20th centuries, a few jurisdictions, such as the U.S. states of Oregon and Massachusetts, experimented with laws under which the family of such a person could have him or her legally declared a "spendthrift" by a court of law. In turn, such persons were considered to lack the legal capacity to enter into binding contracts. Even though such laws made life harder for creditors (who now had the burden of ensuring that any prospective debtor had not been judicially declared a spendthrift), they were thought to be justified by the public policy of keeping a spendthrift's family from ending up in the poorhouse or on welfare. Such laws have since been abolished in favor of bankruptcy, which is more favorable to creditors.

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