reprobate
/ˈɹɛpɹəbət/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.20 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Immoral, having no religious or principled character.
noun
A person with low morals or principles.
verb
To have strong disapproval of something; to reprove; to condemn.
Example Sentences
- "Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them."
- "The reprobate criminal sneered at me."
- "And strength, and art, are easily outdone / By spirits reprobate."
- "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."
- "I acknowledge myself for a reprobate, a villain, a traitor to the king."
- "[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."
Etymology
First attested in c. 1425, in Middle English; inherited from Middle English reprobat(e) (“condemned, damned”, also used as the past participle of reprobaten), borrowed from Latin reprobātus (“disapproved, rejected, condemned”), perfect passive participle of reprobō, see -ate (adjective-forming suffix). The noun was derived from the adjective by substantivization, see -ate (noun-forming suffix).
Origin
- Source language: Middle English
- First known use: First attested in c. 1425
Word Breakdown
- Root: reprobat, reprobātus, reprobaten
Inflected Forms
more reprobate (comparative)
most reprobate (superlative)
reprobates (plural)
reprobates (present, singular)
reprobating (participle, present)
reprobated (participle, past)
reprobated (past)