reprobate

English
WOTD – 26 June 2010

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Latin reprobatus (“disapproved, rejected, condemned”), past participle of reprobare.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈɹɛpɹəbət/
    • Audio (Southern England)(file)

Adjective

reprobate (comparative more reprobate, superlative most reprobate)

  1. (rare) Rejected; cast off as worthless.
  2. Rejected by God; damned, sinful.
  3. Immoral, having no religious or principled character.
    The reprobate criminal sneered at me.
Translations

Noun

reprobate (plural reprobates)

  1. One rejected by God; a sinful person.
    • 1643, John Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce:
      And the solitarines of man, which God had namely and principally orderd to prevent by mariage, hath no remedy, but lies under a worse condition then the loneliest single life; for in single life the absence and remotenes of a helper might inure him to expect his own comforts out of himselfe, or to seek with hope; but here the continuall sight of his deluded thoughts without cure, must needs be to him, if especially his complexion incline him to melancholy, a daily trouble and paine of losse in som degree like that which Reprobats feel.
  2. A person with low morals or principles.
    • c. 1603, Walter Raleigh, Apology for the Voyage to Guiana:
      I acknowledge myself for a reprobate, a villain, a traitor to the king.
    • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 37, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
      [T]he young sinner took leave of Pen, and the club of the elder criminals, and sauntered into Blacquiere’s, an adjacent establishment, frequented by reprobates of his own age.
    • 1920, Herman Cyril McNeile, chapter 1, in Bulldog Drummond:
      "Good morning, Mrs. Denny," he said. "Wherefore this worried look on your face? Has that reprobate James been misbehaving himself?"
    • 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 50, on the Hammersmith & City line:
      West of here, it ascends to its viaduct where, 20 feet above the ground, the Westway seeks to emulate it; two scruffy reprobates shouldering their way through a not very pretty streetscape; the one a railway built by corporate buccaneers, the other a road constructed as part of a discredited plan to girdle London with motorways.
Translations

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Latin reprobare, reprobatus. Doublet of reprove.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈɹɛpɹəbeɪt/
    • Audio (Southern England)(file)

Verb

reprobate (third-person singular simple present reprobates, present participle reprobating, simple past and past participle reprobated)

  1. To have strong disapproval of something; to reprove; to condemn.
    • 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XLV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 274:
      Lord Rotheles allowed it was a very sufficient cause for returning soon, and reprobated all delays of letters, though he confessed to being a very idle correspondent;...
  2. Of God: to abandon or reject, to deny eternal bliss.
  3. To refuse, set aside.
Derived terms
Translations

Anagrams

Latin

Pronunciation

Verb

reprobāte

  1. second-person plural present active imperative of reprobō

Spanish

Verb

reprobate

  1. second-person singular voseo imperative of reprobar combined with te
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