Loafer

subs. (colloquial).—An idler.

  ENGLISH SYNONYMS.  Baker; beat; bummer; crow-eater; draw-latch; flunk; ham-fatter; hayseed; heeler; inspector of pavements; lamb; Laurence (or lazy Laurence); lazybones; miker; moucher; practical politician; Q.H.B; raff; scow-banker; striker; wood-and-water Joey. See CADGER.

  FRENCH SYNONYMS.  La cagne (popular: also generally in contempt); un balochard or balocheur (popular); un batteur de flemme (= Old Fr. flegme = idleness); une baladeuse (= a female loafer); un gratte-pavé (popular = scratch-pavement); un marpant or marpeau (whence morpion = crab louse); un omnibus (in allusion to slowness of pace); un batteur de pavé (popular: cf. INSPECTOR OF PAVEMENTS); un petrouskin (popular); un vachard (popular); un chevalier de la loupe (popular: camp de la loupe = an idlers’ rendezvous; loupeur = a Saint Mondayite); un grand dependeur d’andouilles (= one who prefers good cheer to work: andouilles = chitterlings); un dort-dans-l’auge (pop.: also un dort-enchiant); une fenasse (O. Fr. fen = hay); un faignant (from fainéant); un cul de plomb (= heavy-arse); un rossard (popular); un fourrier de la loupe (familiar); un galapiat, galapian, or galapiau (popular); un las-de-chier (common); Madame milord quépète or quépette (= a LADY FENDER); un gouapeur (thieves’).

  SPANISH SYNONYMS.  Zanguango, zangandongo, or zanguayo.

  GERMAN SYNONYM.  Schallef.

  1840.  R. H. DANA, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, vii. There are no people to whom the newly-invented Yankee word of ‘LOAFER’ is more applicable than to the Spanish Americans.

  1842.  DICKENS, American Notes, xiv. p. 111. When we stop to change, some two or three half-drunken LOAFERS will come loitering out with their hands in their pockets.

  1865.  LADY DUFF-GORDON, in Macmillan’s Magazine, 368. One of the regular LOAFERS who lurk about the ruins to beg and sell water or curiosities and who are all a lazy, bad lot, of course.

  1866.  W. D. HOWELLS, Venetian Life, iii. Note. I permit myself, throughout this book, the use of the expressive American words loaf and LOAFER, as the only terms adequate to the description of professional idling in Venice.

  1872.  W. BLACK, The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, XVIII. The LOAFER in moleskin stood at some little distance.

  1888.  J. RUNCIMAN, The Chequers, 2. I am a LOAFER.

  1892.  T. A. GUTHRIE (‘F. Anstey’), Voces Populi, ‘In the Mall on Drawing-Room Day,’ 80. A Sardonic LOAFER. ’Ullo, ’ere’s a ’aughty one!