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• n  the trait of spending extravagantly
• n  excessive spending

• The prodigality leaves environmentalists seething about the direct-mail bombardment, which consumes millions of trees each year.
• Theologians distinguish the excess called avarice--the sheer, mean taking and hoarding of things--from the excess called prodigality, which is a messier and more full-blooded fault .
• But no one could match, in quantity or searing cynicism, the output of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who startled the world with his prolific prodigality, writing and directing four .

• extravagance
• profligacy
• lavishness
• highlife
• high life

Quotes

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• Pope John Paul II in Independent
  The perfume of the love of John Paul II, said Benedict XVI, "filled all the Church ...... his pontificate was marked by his prodigality ...... he expended himself generously, without holding anything back".
• Franz Kafka in guardian.co.uk
  His prose is serpentine, long-winded, full of what Kafka described as his "opulence and careless prodigality".