loafer

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
9
Words With Friends
10
Letters
6
Pronunciation
/ˈləʊfə/
See all 2 pronunciations
/ˈləʊfə/ · /ˈloʊfɚ/

Definition of loafer

5 senses · 2 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. An idle person.
    “The garden was bounded by a three-foot brick wall with a fringe of wood rails upon the top, and against this wall was leaning a stalwart police constable, surrounded by a small knot of loafers, who craned their necks and strained their eyes in the vain hope of catching some glimpse of the proceedings within.”
    “Along this unequal way, where loafers sat on whittled benches, lounged in doorways, leaned against porch props, Dan Gustin went pegging in his high-heeled boots like a mule in a Mexican chain hobble, holding a straight course for the hotel, past the doors of temptation.”
See all 5 definitions

noun

  1. An idle person.
    “The garden was bounded by a three-foot brick wall with a fringe of wood rails upon the top, and against this wall was leaning a stalwart police constable, surrounded by a small knot of loafers, who craned their necks and strained their eyes in the vain hope of catching some glimpse of the proceedings within.”
    “Along this unequal way, where loafers sat on whittled benches, lounged in doorways, leaned against porch props, Dan Gustin went pegging in his high-heeled boots like a mule in a Mexican chain hobble, holding a straight course for the hotel, past the doors of temptation.”
  2. A shoe with no laces, resembling a moccasin.
    “Someone must explain to Sunak about the time bomb ticking beneath his £1,000 loafers.”
  3. A particular orthogonal spaceship in Conway's Game of Life that moves at a speed of c/7, and the smallest such example.
  4. (Southwestern, US, dialectal)A wolf, especially a grey or timber wolf.
    “The great menace to livestock, other than the continual battle with cold, [...] was the gray wolf. [...] The big loafers came in from everywhere.”
    “Cowboys had killed “loafers” at five hundred yards away with rifles. [...] Lucille was not like most cowhands and she sets out to capture the "loafer" with her lariat.”
    “By the 1890s loafers had become such a problem that some newly organized counties, as well as certain cattle outfits, paid bounties for their scalps. For a cowboy making a dollar or so a day, wolf-hunting could be lucrative.”

verb

  1. (dialectal, intransitive)To loaf around; to be idle.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

Perhaps short for landloafer, possibly a partial translation of German Landläufer (compare dialectal German loofen (“to run”), and English landlouper); or more likely connected to Middle English love, loove, loffinge,…

See full etymology

Perhaps short for landloafer, possibly a partial translation of German Landläufer (compare dialectal German loofen (“to run”), and English landlouper); or more likely connected to Middle English love, loove, loffinge, looffinge (“a remnant, the rest, that which remains or lingers”), from Old English lāf (“remainder, residue, what is left”) (more at lave), which is akin to Scots lave (“the rest, remainder”), Old English lǣfan (“to let remain, leave behind”) (more at leave).

Anagrams of loafer

4 plays · some not in Scrabble

Best play florae 9 points

Hooks

1 extension · 1 back

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