reprobate
nounEtymology 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).
1
One rejected by God; a sinful person.
- 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.1643, John Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce:
2
A person with low morals or principles.
- I acknowledge myself for a reprobate, a villain, a traitor to the king.c. 1603, Walter Raleigh, Apology for the Voyage to Guiana:
- [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.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 37, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
2 more examples
- "Good morning, Mrs. Denny," he said. "Wherefore this worried look on your face? Has that reprobate James been misbehaving himself?"1920, Herman Cyril McNeile, chapter 1, in Bulldog Drummond:
- 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.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 50, on the Hammersmith & City line:
- Related terms
- depraved