spendthrift
Americannoun
-
spendthrifts
plural
adjective
noun
adjective
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of spendthrift
Explanation
A spendthrift person is reckless and wasteful with his money. If you're a spendthrift, you might find yourself in debt. However, it might be fun to have a spendthrift friend who likes to treat you to expensive lunches and lavish gifts. Spendthrift was created by sticking two opposite words together: spend and thrift, which means “savings, wealth.” So a spendthrift spends all of his savings. Spendthrift people are the worst nightmare of retirement planners and Scrooges all over the globe. So unless you want to be called a spendthrift, think twice about your next purchase.
Vocabulary lists containing spendthrift
The Catcher in the Rye
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A Doll's House
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Intermediate, List 9
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Yardeni Research President Ed Yardeni said Thursday that the results offer the “latest evidence that consumers have continued their spendthrift ways.”
From Barron's ● Apr. 30, 2026
A spendthrift trust is irrevocable and designed to protect a beneficiary’s inheritance from creditors, civil lawsuits resulting from an alleged $100,000 bank fraud and/or, as importantly, their own financial irresponsibility.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 16, 2026
No one today any longer wishes to hear jokes about nagging mothers-in-law, spendthrift wives or old jalopies, and the men and women who once told them to hardy plaudits are now forgotten.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025
Trusts also allow you to put restrictions on how money is spent, which can be important if your heir is a minor child, a spendthrift or someone reliant on public benefits.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 29, 2024
The prestige of his outlandish voracity, of his immense capacity as a spendthrift, of his unprecedented hospitality went beyond the borders of the swamp and attracted the best-qualified gluttons from all along the coast.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I will uphold his wishes, but if I outlive him and there’s no agreement in place, I would likely give little to nothing to his children because they are irresponsible spendthrifts.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 16, 2026
Here’s what typically happens to spendthrifts who clear their debt.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 1, 2023
Clearing her throat, she started to read aloud: “Workers earn it, spendthrifts burn it, bankers lend it.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 8, 2019
The reason massive stars are such spendthrifts is that, as we saw above, the rate of fusion depends very strongly on the star’s core temperature.
From Textbooks ● Oct. 13, 2016
Like the arrant spendthrifts that we were, money was no object to us so long as our fortune lasted.
From The Wayfarers by Snaith, J. C.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
