extravagant

From Old French and French extravagant, from Medieval Latin extravagans, past participle of extravagari (“to wander beyond”), from Latin extra (“beyond”) + vagari (“to wander, stray”).

• IPA^(key): /ɪkˈstɹævəɡənt/

extravagant (comparative more extravagant, superlative most extravagant)

1. Exceeding the bounds of something; roving; hence, foreign.
   • William Shakespeare

     The extravagant and erring spirit hies / To his confine.

2. Extreme; wild; excessive; unrestrained.
   • Addison

     There appears something nobly wild and extravagant in great natural geniuses.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess‎:

     The half-dozen pieces […] were painted white and carved with festoons of flowers, birds and cupids. […] The bed was the most extravagant piece. Its graceful cane halftester rose high towards the cornice and was so festooned in carved white wood that the effect was positively insecure, as if the great couch were trimmed with icing sugar.

   extravagant acts, praise, or abuse

3. Exorbitant.
   • 2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55:

     According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.

4. Profuse in expenditure; prodigal; wasteful.

   an extravagant man;  extravagant expense

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Bancroft to this entry?)

• See also Thesaurus:excessive

• vagabond
• extravagance
• extravagation

• extravagant in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• extravagant in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

extravagant (feminine singular extravagante, masculine plural extravagants, feminine plural extravagantes)

1. extravagant

• “extravagant” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

From French extravagant

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extravagant (comparative extravaganter, superlative am extravagantesten)

1. extravagant

• Extravaganz

• extravagant in Duden online