Loaf

subs. (common).—1.  A lounge; dawdle; idling: e.g., ‘to do a LOAF.’

  2.  See LOAVES AND FISHES.

  Verb. (common).—1.  To lounge; to idle; TO MIKE (q.v.). Fr. louper and gouspiner.

  FRENCH SYNONYMS.  Avoir les côtes en long (popular); balocher (thieves’); louper; traîner sa peau (thieves’); n’en pas foutre une secousse (popular); prendre le train d’onze heures (commercial); traîner ses guêtres.

  1838.  J. C. NEAL, Charcoal Sketches, III. ii. One night, Mr. Dobbs came home from his LOAFING-place, for he LOAFS of an evening like the generality of people.

  1843.  B. F. NORMAN, Rambles in Yucatan, p. 88. We arrived at the town of Tinum at two o’clock. The sun being excessively hot, we waited till evening. The Casa-real in this, as in other towns of the province, was the LOAFERING-place of the Indians.

  1843.  DICKENS, Martin Chuzzlewit, xvi. p. 170. Just now, Mrs. Pawklns kept a boarding-house, and Major Pawkins rather LOAFED his time away, than otherwise.

  1845.  New York Commercial Advertiser, Dec. The Senate has LOAFED away the week in very gentlemanly style.

  1857.  BORTHWICK, Three Years in California, p. 118–9. The street [in Hangtown, California] was crowded all day with miners LOAFING about from store to store, making their purchases and asking each other to drink, the effects of which began to be seen at an early hour in the number of drunken men, and the consequent frequency of rows and quarrels.

  1861.  H. KINGSLEY, Ravenshoe, II. xv. Shoe-blacks are compelled to a great deal of unavoidable LOAFING, but certainly this one LOAFED rather energetically.

  1862.  J. R. LOWELL, The Biglow Papers, 2nd S., Int. TO LOAF: this, I think, is unquestionably German. Laufen is pronounced lofen in some parts of Germany, and I once heard one German student say to another ‘Ich lauf (lofe) hier bis du wiederkehrest,’ and he began accordingly to saunter up and down, in short, TO LOAF.

  1872.  Daily News, 29 Jan., ‘America in Paris.’ Its glass-roofed courts are filled with men of few words and long purses, whose chief mission in life seems to be that of LOAFING ROUND, and paying the endless bills which their wives send in to them. Diving into newspapers is comprised in the verb TO LOAF.

  1873.  W. BLACK, A Princess of Thule, ch. xiv. Amongst all those LOAFING vagabonds.

  1878.  WALT WHITMAN, Leaves of Grass, 29. I lean and LOAFE at my ease.

  1880.  H. SEEBOHM, Siberia in Europe, ch. xx. Gipsy migrants who perpetually LOAF about on the outskirts of the frost during winter.

  1892.  T. A. GUTHRIE (‘F. Anstey’), Mr. Punch’s Model Music-Hall Songs & Dramas, 134.

  2.  (American university).—To borrow, especially with no intention of return.

  TO BE IN BAD LOAF, verb. phr. (old).—To be in a disagreeable situation or in trouble.—GROSE (1785).