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Monday, February 11, 2013

Criminal Sentence 632: Thrifty vs Spendthrift

From an article about a man who finally started saving for retirement:

"My wife is thrifty and our combined incomes were well over $100,000 a year. With her spendthrift abilities we were able to pay off all of our credit card debts."

I had to laugh at that. He called his wife a spendthrift when he meant to repeat she was thrifty.

Thrifty = saves money well
Spendthrift = wastefully extravagant

2 comments:

ChildsPlay said...

Why does spendthrift mean basically the opposite of thrifty. It looks like it should mean spend in a thrifty manner.

The Sentence Sleuth said...

I don't know why, but that's just the way it is!