reprobate
Americannoun
adjective
verb (used with object)
adjective
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morally unprincipled; depraved
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Christianity destined or condemned to eternal punishment in hell
noun
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an unprincipled, depraved, or damned person
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a disreputable or roguish person
the old reprobate
verb
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to disapprove of; condemn
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(of God) to destine, consign, or condemn to eternal punishment in hell
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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reprobatesimple
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reprobatessimple
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have reprobatedperfect
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has reprobatedperfect
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am reprobatingprogressive
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are reprobatingprogressive
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is reprobatingprogressive
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have been reprobatingperfect progressive
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has been reprobatingperfect progressive
Past
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reprobatedsimple
-
had reprobatedperfect
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was reprobatingprogressive
-
were reprobatingprogressive
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had been reprobatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of reprobate
1400–50; late Middle English reprobaten < Latin reprobātus; past participle of reprobāre to reprove
Explanation
There's no way around it, a reprobate is a bad egg. The black sheep of the family, missing a moral compass — a reprobate's been called everything from a deviant to an evildoer to a scoundrel. Selfish, depraved, disreputable, a reprobate is not known for his inner goodness. In fact, reprobates were once considered "rejected by God," the meaning of the noun in the 1500s. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, a reprobate was a popular literary character, sometimes amusing, as noted in Henry James' Daisy Miller, "What a clever little reprobate she was, and how smartly she played an injured innocence!"
Vocabulary lists containing reprobate
300 Most Difficult "SAT" Words
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Scrooge, Grinch, and Churl: Wonderful Words for Unpleasant People
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Oh, No! Synonyms for "Bad"
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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:
The other is “Fleabag”: Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s acidic reprobate, Ms. Weisz’s character is unconstrained by a fourth wall, sharing with us, reflecting, observing, making wisecracks but not being particularly funny.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 5, 2026
Mejia somehow kept a quiet presence locally until the beginning of 2021, when activists launched an offensive against the reprobate.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 26, 2021
Throughout the interview he describes himself, variously, as the "serial pest nuisance of Melbourne" and "an old reprobate, easily forgiven".
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2019
When we remember Alex Higgins, his fellow snooker genius and reprobate who died in 2010, White suggests that losing their epic semi-final at the worlds might have saved him.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 23, 2019
“He was just an old reprobate who lived poor and died broke,” Grandma said.
From "A Long Way from Chicago" by Richard Peck
Both of those reprobates have attracted a following of immense numbers of people — many who simply don't get it.
From Salon ● Apr. 21, 2022
Cole was also the primary source for Stephen Davis’s 1985 biography “Hammer of the Gods,” a book that solidified the posthumous image of Led Zeppelin as heathen reprobates.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 28, 2018
The lines are long, especially if you're trying to get there before the 11:30 cutoff for breakfast specials, and the business is geared toward families, not reprobates.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 29, 2017
Baseball catches just a handful of reprobates each year.
From New York Times ● Sep. 21, 2017
Every member of Phippsburg’s First Congregational—as well as lost reprobates from other denominations—had gathered to greet the new minister and his family.
From "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy" by Gary D. Schmidt
There was no doubt but that the viands which were publicly reprobated were privately enjoyed.
From The Gentle Reader by Crothers, Samuel McChord
So that the desire of dominion, which was once frankly150 confessed or boasted of as a heroic passion, is now sternly reprobated or cunningly disclaimed.
From Modern Painters. Vol. III (of V) Containing Part IV. Of Many Things by Ruskin, John
Assembling the people, he reprobated in strong terms the prevailing heresy.
From Secret Societies of the Middle Ages by Keightley, Thomas
The master is reprobated who will divide families.
From Discussion on American Slavery by Breckinridge, Rev. Robert J.
As often as they returned from our hemisphere, they reprobated our ambition, infidelities, and inconstancies; and though they had no form of public worship, were, it seems, strict lovers and reverers of truth.
From British Goblins Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Sikes, Wirt
The high contracting parties, therefore, join in reprobating any other than an entirely voluntary immigration for these purposes.
From The Treaty With China, its Provisions Explained New York Tribune, Tuesday, August 28, 1868 by Twain, Mark
Footnote 33: I.e., if the despatch were to abstain from reprobating the French policy.
From The Letters of Queen Victoria : A Selection from Her Majesty's Correspondence between the Years 1837 and 1861 Volume 3, 1854-1861 by Benson, Arthur Christopher
With the exception of the Cardinal of Lorraine, they were well-nigh unanimous in reprobating a venture from which they apprehended only disaster.
From History of the Rise of the Huguenots Vol. 1 by Baird, Henry Martyn
He was once reprobating the introduction of all bull and bear similes into poetry.
From Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey by Cottle, Joseph
In the spectacle of these Christians reprobating each others' creeds Goethe saw a theme for a moral satire which, fragment as it is, takes its place with the most powerful efforts of his genius.
From The Youth of Goethe by Brown, Peter Hume
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.
