Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Careless in handling money; wasteful.
- adjective Archaic Lacking usefulness or value.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Having no thrift, frugality, or good management; profuse; extravagant.
- Producing no gain; unprofitable.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Without thrift; not prudent or prosperous in money affairs.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
wastefully reckless in the use ofmoney or otherresources
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective careless of the future
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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When a cow-puncher is said to be working the grub line, he is known as a thriftless cowman who cannot hold a job long anywhere, and who travels from ranch to ranch, staying only long enough at each to get fed up, then passing on with a few dollars in his pocket, to repeat the operation elsewhere.
Ted Strong in Montana With Lariat and Spur Edward C. Taylor
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If many of them lived on the knife-edge of poverty, it was as much a result of their low wages and unsteady employment as any "thriftless" habits of alcoholism or gambling.
NPR Topics: News 2009
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His use of anecdote is both masterly and thriftless; he takes episodes around which less skilful writers would have built entire chapters and delivers them in a few perfectly weighted sentences.
Animal Magic: A Brother's Story by Andrew Barrow – review 2011
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One Dr F. W. Mott claimed that children born to the pauper, to the alien Jew, to the Irish Roman Catholic, to the thriftless casual labourers, to the criminals all carried a neuropathic taint, a comment echoed by another doctor who claimed that unregulated immigration made Great Britain a dumping ground for the unfit and that England had become the asylum of the world.16
Bedlam Catharine Arnold 2008
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One Dr F. W. Mott claimed that children born to the pauper, to the alien Jew, to the Irish Roman Catholic, to the thriftless casual labourers, to the criminals all carried a neuropathic taint, a comment echoed by another doctor who claimed that unregulated immigration made Great Britain a dumping ground for the unfit and that England had become the asylum of the world.16
Bedlam Catharine Arnold 2008
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Five years earlier those scions of the radical Left, the Webbs, published a Fabian tract warning that children are being born freely to Irish Roman Catholics and the Polish, Russian and German Jews, the thriftless and irresponsible ...
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One Dr F. W. Mott claimed that children born to the pauper, to the alien Jew, to the Irish Roman Catholic, to the thriftless casual labourers, to the criminals all carried a neuropathic taint, a comment echoed by another doctor who claimed that unregulated immigration made Great Britain a dumping ground for the unfit and that England had become the asylum of the world.16
Bedlam Catharine Arnold 2008
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Some day you will bitterly deplore his ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of delicacy, his inability to understand love, and countless troubles arising through him.
A Woman of Thirty 2007
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No reconstruction of society can avail for incompetent, indifferent, thriftless men who cannot work together.
Black and White T. Thomas Fortune 2007
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No reconstruction of society can avail for incompetent, indifferent, thriftless men who cannot work together.
Black and White T. Thomas Fortune 2007
yarb commented on the word thriftless
The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves.
- Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, ch. 13
September 6, 2008
arby commented on the word thriftless
Nice word!
Not to be confused with shiftless.
September 6, 2008