reprobate
Americannoun
adjective
verb (used with object)
-
reprobates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
reprobated,
past participle, past
-
reprobating
present participle
adjective
-
morally unprincipled; depraved
-
Christianity destined or condemned to eternal punishment in hell
noun
-
an unprincipled, depraved, or damned person
-
a disreputable or roguish person
the old reprobate
verb
-
to disapprove of; condemn
-
(of God) to destine, consign, or condemn to eternal punishment in hell
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
reprobatesimple
-
reprobatessimple
-
have reprobatedperfect
-
has reprobatedperfect
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am reprobatingprogressive
-
are reprobatingprogressive
-
is reprobatingprogressive
-
have been reprobatingperfect progressive
-
has been reprobatingperfect progressive
Past
-
reprobatedsimple
-
had reprobatedperfect
-
was reprobatingprogressive
-
were reprobatingprogressive
-
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 film introduces us to Ricky Bobby’s family with a gross-out splat, implying the soon-to-be stock car racer was born in the back of a speeding Chevelle driven by his reprobate father.
From Salon ● Aug. 16, 2026
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
Castleberry can make you wonder which reprobate to care about most, which sin causes the most harm.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 6, 2025
He’s a reprobate with no confidence in grace, reduced to keeping his spirit afloat with a mixture of self-deprecating irony and the affectations of civility.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 21, 2020
“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
It is not merely Falstaff she has in mind when demonstrating, in this healing adaptation, that even the worst old reprobates can be taught a lesson and welcomed back into the family.
From New York Times ● Aug. 9, 2021
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
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
After the crumbling of the Sampson fortune, Old Chester had to plan for Lydia, and take care of her, and give her its "plain sewing"; so, naturally, William was reprobated.
From Dr. Lavendar's People by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
Stubborn—cruel often at times as he was—she nevertheless felt and knew that while he reprobated and deplored her seeming lightness of character, yet deep in his soul he still held her very dear.
From The Tigress by Anne Warner
There was no offense in the southern colonies more deplored, more reprobated, more legislated against than what was known as “ingrossing, forestalling, or regrating.”
From Curious Punishments of Bygone Days by Alice Morse Earle
The most ascetic Christians began to question the legality of second marriages on the part of either sex, as even paganism had often reprobated second marriages of women.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 5 "Cat" to "Celt" by Various
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 John Ruskin
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 Mark Twain
He was once reprobating the introduction of all bull and bear similes into poetry.
From Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey by Joseph Cottle
I told him generally in the sarcastic or reprobating tone he had used, and particularly in his personal attack on the Duke for holding the offices.
From The Greville Memoirs A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III by Charles Greville
On the whole Mr. Spectator has perhaps done wisely in humouring as well as reprobating.
From A Cursory History of Swearing by Julian Sharman
They suffered a split by the loss of the followers of Deleon, who was the leader of the ``Socialist Labor Party'' and advocated a ``Don't vote'' policy, while reprobating violent methods.
From Proposed Roads to Freedom by Bertrand Russell
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.
