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''lavish'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260606185347-00-⌔

lavish - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

lavish (comparativelavisher or more lavish, superlativelavishest or most lavish)

  • Expending or bestowing profusely; profuse; prodigal.
    • ✤ Synonyms: profuse, wasteful, extravagant, exuberant, immoderate, opulent, expansive; see also Thesaurus: prodigal
    • ✤ * lavish of money; lavish of praise*
    • ✤ The day was cool and snappy for August, and the Rise all green with a lavish nature. Now we plunged into a deep shade with the boughs lacing each other overhead, and crossed dainty, rustic bridges over the cold trout-streams, the boards giving back the clatter of our horses’ feet: […].1
    • ✤ Mind you, clothes were clothes in those days. There was a great deal of them, lavish both in material and in workmanship.2
  • Superabundant; excessive.
    • ✤ Synonyms: immoderate, unrestrained; see also Thesaurus: excessive
    • ✤ * lavish spirits*
    • ✤ * lavish meal*
    • ✤ Let her haue needfull, but not lauish meanes3
    • ✤ The accommodation for passengers was designed on a rather lavish scale, as it was expected that extensive housing development would take place in the vicinity. These hopes were not realised, however, and, apart from the school buildings, the surroundings of the station have never lost their rusticity.4
    • ✤ Max Chafkin, Thiel’s biographer, describes Vance as his “extension”, while Cadwalladr describes Vance, somewhat impolitely, as “Thiel’s creature… a man Thiel moulded in his own image through lavish investments in his business and political careers”.5
  • (obsolete) Unrestrained, impetuous.
    • ✤ Synonyms: hasty, impulsive, rash, spontaneous
    • ✤ Thou wilt repent theſe lauiſh words of thine6
  • (chiefly dialectal) Rank or lush with vegetation.
    • ✤ Synonyms: bosky, verdant; see also Thesaurus: verdant
    • ✤ […] Thro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb;
      ⁠But all the lavish hills would hum
      The murmur of a happy Pan: […]      7

Verb

lavish (third-person singular simple present lavishes, present participle lavishing, simple past and past participle lavished)

  • (transitive) To give out extremely generously; to squander.
    • ✤ They lavished money on the dinner.
  • (transitive) To give out to (somebody) extremely generously.
    • ✤ They lavished him with praise.

Noun

lavish (uncountable)

  • (obsolete) Excessive abundance or expenditure, profusion, prodigality.

Etymology

From Middle English laves, lavas, lavage (“extravagant, wasteful, prodigal”), from lavas (“excessive abundance”), from Old French lavasse, lavache (“torrent of rain”); possibly later conflated in some senses by Middle English laven (“to pour out”), equivalent to lave +‎ -ish. Compare Scots lawage, lavisch, lavish (“unrestrained, excessively prodigal, extravagant”). Compare also English lavy (“lavish, liberal”), Dutch lafenis (“lavishness”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈlævɪʃ/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Audio (Australian): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ævɪʃ

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC: ↩

  2. 1977, Agatha Christie, chapter 4, in An Autobiography, part II, London: Collins, →ISBN: ↩

  3. c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]: ↩

  4. 1953 February, H. A. Vallance, “To Brighton through the Shoreham Gap”, in Railway Magazine, page 81: ↩

  5. 2024 August 14, Bryn Haworth, “Artificial Ignorance: broligarchs and their brains should read Gulliver”, in Al Majalla ‎, archived from the original on 11 September 2024: ↩

  6. c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii: ↩

  7. 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXIII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 39: ↩

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