lavish
Americanadjective
-
expended, bestowed, or occurring in profusion.
lavish spending.
- Synonyms:
- wild, unrestrained, wasteful, unreasonable, thriftless, intemperate, improvident, immoderate, extravagant, excessive
-
using or giving in great amounts; prodigal (often followed byof ).
lavish of his time;
lavish of affection.
- Synonyms:
- unsparing, openhanded, munificent, liberal, free, effusive, bountiful, generous
- Antonyms:
- tight-fisted, tight, stingy, parsimonious, miserly, cheap
verb (used with object)
adjective
-
prolific, abundant, or profuse
-
generous; unstinting; liberal
-
extravagant; prodigal; wasteful
lavish expenditure
verb
Related Words
Lavish, prodigal, profuse refer to that which exists in abundance and is poured out copiously. Lavish suggests (sometimes excessive) generosity and openhandedness: lavish hospitality; much too lavish. Prodigal suggests wastefulness, improvidence, and reckless impatience of restraint: a prodigal extravagance. Profuse emphasizes abundance, but may suggest overemotionalism, exaggeration, or the like: profuse thanks, compliments, apologies.
Other Word Forms
- lavisher noun
- lavishly adverb
- lavishment noun
- lavishness noun
- overlavish adjective
- overlavishness noun
- unlavish adjective
- unlavished adjective
Etymology
Origin of lavish
First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English lavas “profusion” (noun), “profuse” (adjective), from Middle French lavasse, lavache “downpour of rain,” derivative of laver “to wash,” from Latin lavāre
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.
In the lavish memorial erected by his grieving widow, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert is golden, but few world leaders are permanently gilded, and certainly not before their deaths.
From Los Angeles Times
But the stadium has also served as a warehouse for food supplies, and Hezbollah held the lavish funeral there for its former leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel in September 2024.
From Barron's
Companies were growing and bosses were lavishing ever-higher pay and perks.
The layers of shell companies and use of foreign conduits into luxury real estate help leaders of the Islamic Republic maintain an image back home of embracing modesty and rejecting lavish lifestyles, researchers say.
The daughter in this hypothetical scenario isn’t buying rounds of lattes and taking lavish vacations.
From MarketWatch
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.
