Lavish
adj, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Excessive abundance or expenditure, profusion, prodigality. obsolete, uncountable
- 1 To give out extremely generously; to squander. transitive
"They lavished money on the dinner."
- 2 expend profusely; also used with abstract nouns wordnet
- 3 To give out to (somebody) extremely generously. transitive
"They lavished him with praise."
- 1 Expending or bestowing profusely; profuse; prodigal.
"lavish of money; lavish of praise"
- 2 Superabundant; excessive.
"lavish spirits"
- 3 Unrestrained, impetuous. obsolete
"Thou wilt repent theſe lauiſh words of thine"
- 4 Rank or lush with vegetation. dialectal
"[…] Thro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb; But all the lavish hills would hum The murmur of a happy Pan: […]"
- 1 very generous wordnet
- 2 characterized by extravagance and profusion wordnet
Example
More examples"The real estate broker was lavish in his spending in Ginza."
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”).
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.