improvident
adjective
Did you know?
Improvident describes someone’s actions or habits as being unwise with regard to saving or providing for the future. It’s a formal word, but the behavior it describes is well illustrated by many of the stories people hear or read as children, including some of the world’s oldest. In Aesop’s fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” the grasshopper could certainly be called improvident—he spends all summer singing and dancing while the ant works hard to prepare for winter by storing food, and at the end of the short tale is cold and starving. While today improvident is used mostly in the context of money, and those who are irresponsible with it, one can be improvident with other things (such as time or food), even happily. In another children’s tale, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, author Beatrix Potter introduces the titular family of bunnies, sleepy from eating too much lettuce, as follows: “they were very improvident and cheerful.”
Examples of improvident in a Sentence
Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, 23 June 2025
Unsurprisingly, Peter proves to be nasty, brutish and improvident.
—Joanne Kaufman, WSJ, 2 Dec. 2022
Going that route is improvident.
—Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 5 Mar. 2022
The history of emerging markets is full of imprudent investors as well as improvident borrowers.
—The Economist, 5 Oct. 2017
Cite this Entry
“Improvident.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/improvident. Accessed 14 Nov. 2025.
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improvident
adjective
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