profligation

Noun

profligation (countable and uncountable, plural profligations)

1. (obsolete) defeat; rout; overthrow
   • the braying of Silenus his Ass, conduced much to the profligation of the Giants1609 (revised 1625), Francis Bacon, De Sapientia Veterum ('Wisdom of the Ancients')
   • This is David's profligation and discomfiture of his enemies; this is an act of true honour, a true victory, a true triumph, to keep the field, to make good one station, and yet put the enemy to flight.1839, John Donne, The Works of John Donne, page 478
2. Licentiousness; lewd behavior.
   • I've seen your player show folks, and such like wiggeling and waggeling, and chattering about London pride, and London profligation, and what not – Now I think, if one of them was just to set about talking a little of London kindheartedness and London charity, it would be rather more truerer, and...1807, Thomas Morton, The School of Reform, page 64
   • a site of constant exchange and transition, Columbus Circle is suspended in a state of marginal profligation through numerous fugitive concurrences .2013, Evan Douglis, Autogenic Structures
3. The quality of being profligate; extravagance; overabundance.
   • This profligation of grant programs has tended to confuse objectives, recipients, and administrators.1973, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Subcommittee on Employment, Poverty, and Migratory Labor, Impact of Federal Policies on Employment, Poverty, and Other...
   • Earlier this century, the preferred way for realists to mitigate any prima facie profligation of scientific entities was by appeal to scientific reductionism — the notion that all (other) sciences or parts of science are reducible to a single science and so, likewise, that all (other) scientific...2002, R. Baine Harris, Neoplatonism and Contemporary Thought, page 19