improvidence
- noun
- /ɪmˈprɒvɪdəns/
- Formal
:
improvidence
- Due to her improvidence, she frequently found herself without enough money to pay for basic necessities.
Examples
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Ibsen's father Knud did not inherit wealth, but through bad investments and general improvidence, he lost all the money he had made.
Academic text (1995) -
But to the extent that improvidence is more likely to harm the poor than the rich, as a prudential matter, the poor really do have a greater stake in avoiding it.
Academic text (1991) -
New Jersey offers a dramatic instance of this corruption and improvidence.
Blog text (26) -
Poverty was partly the result of depravity and improvidence, and those in turn reinforced more poverty and more filth.
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To encourage irresponsibility, improvidence, dependence, and failure, reward it by subsidizing it.
Blog text (33) -
Both Jewish and Catholic traditions assumed poverty was permanent and made little moral distinctions based on whether poverty was the result of sin or improvidence.
Academic text (1992) -
Song, dance, pleasure, and improvidence have all been traditionally ascribed to the Circean temptress's domain: the empire of the senses.
Academic text (1997) -
Public welfare officials, responsible for the "unworthy" dependents, were motivated by the fear that charity would encourage improvidence and laziness among the lower class, as well as by the desire to keep expenditures as low as possible.
Academic text (1992) -
Both Catholic and Jewish immigrants resisted pressures of dominant community values partly because they refused to make moral distinctions based on whether poverty was the result of sin or improvidence.
Academic text (1992) -
I also think that this kind of communication is not by chance; it would be good to remind politicians that the media leaves the 15,000 deaths of their improvidence in 2003 and emphasize strongly that this is not the return to Sarkozyist time, nor working conditions dictated by the heirs of the iron-masters that will fix the problem.
Blog text (14)
Synonyms
3
7.2
Not thinking about the future when making decisions
1
7.7
A failure to be careful or to use good judgment when making choices
Antonyms
How Provident
Surface Forms
Morphology
improvidence = providence (transparent) = im + providence
Formed by the negative prefix 'im-' added to 'providence' meaning foresight, yielding 'lack of foresight'; the derivation is straightforward.
Etymology
Improvidence comes from im- ('not') and providence, which originally had parts meaning 'before' and 'to see'. So improvidence means 'not seeing ahead' — failing to plan or save, especially with money, and you can remember it by thinking of provide or provision, which are about getting things ready while improvidence is the opposite.