Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Lack of thrift; thriftlessness; prodigality.
  • noun Folly.
  • noun A prodigal; one who wastes his estate by extravagance; one without thrift.
  • Profuse; prodigal.
  • Poor; unthrifty.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Want of thrift; unthriftiness; prodigality.
  • noun obsolete An unthrifty person.
  • adjective obsolete Unthrifty.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A lack of thriftiness; prodigality.
  • noun Someone who is not thrifty; a spendthrift, someone who is not careful with their money.
  • adjective Unthrifty.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From un- +‎ thrift.

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Examples

  • The New Bedford superintendent of schools argued that it was the lack of sewing skills that caused what he saw to be the "unthrift and ragged shiftlessness of many homes."

    "Make It Yourself": Home Sewing, Gender, and Culture, 1890-1930 2006

  • What man didst thou ever know unthrift that was beloved after his means?

    The Life of Timon of Athens 2004

  • The Earl of Oxford, a young unthrift, whom Foster had more than once accommodated with loans on usurious interest, acknowledged, on this appeal, that he knew him as a wealthy and independent franklin, supposed to be worth much money, and verified the certificate produced to be his handwriting.

    Kenilworth 2004

  • He had always disliked Owen, regarding him as an unthrift, any close connexion with whom could only bring contamination on the Fitzgerald property; and Owen had returned the feeling tenfold.

    Castle Richmond 2004

  • The Times proclaimed that the prime cause why the Irish peasantry have been reduced to their present level must be sought for in the neglect and unthrift of past generations of claret - drinking, writ-despising, landlords. 15

    Ed Lengel: "A 'Perverse and Ill-Fated People'" 1996

  • The whole smoking, stoop-shouldered, ill-scented throng were descendants of that Tennessee and Carolina element which more enterprising Hoosiers deplore, because in every generation it repeats the ignorance and unthrift branded so many years ago into the "poor white" of the South.

    Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 of Popular Literature and Science Various

  • There is for the most part a great overgrowth and overrunning of the least desirable elements, a general air of slovenliness and unthrift; in all artificial arrangements decay seems imminent, and the want of idea in the laying out of grounds is a striking feature.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 20, June, 1859 Various

  • Neither know I where that unthrift William is these two days.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859 Various

  • Everywhere were visible tokens of that miserly thrift which, carried to excess, degenerates into unthrift of the worst and meanest kind, from which the transition to absolute ruin is both easy and certain.

    The Argosy Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 Various

  • He is a type of a great many who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift under the new government, I cannot say.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863 Various

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