All 5 Uses of

prodigal
in
Don Quixote

This tendency of his to be liberal and profuse he had acquired from having been a soldier in his youth, for the soldier's life is a school in which the niggard becomes free-handed and the free-handed prodigal; and if any soldiers are to be found who are misers, they are monsters of rare occurrence.†
Chpt 1.39-40

My father went beyond liberality and bordered on prodigality, a disposition by no means advantageous to a married man who has children to succeed to his name and position.†
Chpt 1.39-40

Finding, then, that he was unable to resist his propensity, he resolved to divest himself of the instrument and cause of his prodigality and lavishness, to divest himself of wealth, without which Alexander himself would have seemed parsimonious;†
Chpt 1.39-40

for, as it is easier for the prodigal than for the miser to become generous, so it is easier for a rash man to prove truly valiant than for a coward to rise to true valour;†
Chpt 2.17-18

Definitions:

(1) (prodigal)
recklessly wasteful

or more rarely:

abundant (extravagant in amount)

or more rarely still:

long absent (someone who has been away a long time)
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

More rarely, prodigal is used as a noun as a shortened version of prodigal son to reference someone who is wasteful like the prodigal son in the famous Christian parable. When the prodigal son came home and apologized for his wasteful and ungrateful ways, his father forgave him, loved him, and celebrated the return.