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INDULGENT
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Being favorably inclined
Example:
an indulgent attitude
Classified under:
Similar:
favorable; favourable (encouraging or approving or pleasing)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Characterized by or given to yielding to the wishes of someone
Example:
indulgent grandparents
Classified under:
Similar:
decadent (luxuriously self-indulgent)
betting; card-playing; dissipated; sporting (preoccupied with the pursuit of pleasure and especially games of chance)
epicurean; luxuriant; luxurious; sybaritic; voluptuary; voluptuous (displaying luxury and furnishing gratification to the senses)
gay (given to social pleasures often including dissipation)
epicurean; hedonic; hedonistic (devoted to pleasure)
hard; heavy; intemperate (given to excessive indulgence of bodily appetites especially for intoxicating liquors)
overindulgent (excessively indulgent)
pampering (gratifying tastes, appetites, or desires)
self-indulgent (indulgent of your own appetites and desires)
Also:
gluttonous (given to excess in consumption of especially food or drink)
Antonym:
nonindulgent (characterized by strictness, severity, or restraint)
Derivation:
indulgence (a disposition to yield to the wishes of someone)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Tolerant or lenient
Example:
they are soft on crime
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
permissive (granting or inclined or able to grant permission; not strict in discipline)
Derivation:
indulgence (a disposition to yield to the wishes of someone)
Context examples:
She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Mrs. Thorpe was a widow, and not a very rich one; she was a good-humoured, well-meaning woman, and a very indulgent mother.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with few pretensions.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
She treated her therefore, with all the indulgent fondness of a parent towards a favourite child on the last day of its holidays.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
There is indeed another custom, which I cannot altogether approve of: when the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle indulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewed with a certain brown powder of a deadly composition, which being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
She was a woman who spent her days in sitting, nicely dressed, on a sofa, doing some long piece of needlework, of little use and no beauty, thinking more of her pug than her children, but very indulgent to the latter when it did not put herself to inconvenience, guided in everything important by Sir Thomas, and in smaller concerns by her sister.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
He was, in short, in his after-dinner mood; more expanded and genial, and also more self- indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the morning; still he looked preciously grim, cushioning his massive head against the swelling back of his chair, and receiving the light of the fire on his granite- hewn features, and in his great, dark eyes; for he had great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too—not without a certain change in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at least, of that feeling.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
But by an appeal to her affection for her mother, by representing the inconveniences which that indulgent mother must draw on herself, if (as would probably be the case) she consented to this increase of establishment, Marianne was shortly subdued; and she promised not to tempt her mother to such imprudent kindness by mentioning the offer, and to tell Willoughby when she saw him next, that it must be declined.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
