Citations:occupationless

English citations of occupationless

Adjective: "having no occupation; jobless; idle"

					1857 1898	1903 1913
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1857 — Henry A. Murray, Lands of the Slave and the Free, or, Cuba, the United States, and Canada, Chapter XVI:

  […] and though there are no drones in a Yankee hive, so thoroughly did they dedicate themselves to my comfort and amusement, that a person ignorant of the true state of things might have fancied they were as idle and occupationless as the cigar-puffers who adorn some of our metropolitan-club steps, the envy of passing butcher-boys and the liberal distributors of cigar-ends to unwashed youths who hang about ready to pounce upon the delicious and rejected morsels.

• 1898 — Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, The American Publishing Company (1898), Chapter LXV:

  Protestant Missionary work is coldly regarded by the commercial white colonist all over the heathen world, as a rule, and its product is nicknamed "rice-Christians" (occupationless incapables who join the church for revenue only), but I think it would be difficult to pick a flaw in the work of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the disposition to attempt it has not shown itself.

• 1903 — Frederic S. Isham, Under the Rose, The Bobbs-Merill Company (1903), Chapter XII:

  In truth, the only dissatisfied onlookers were the quick-fingered spoilers and rovers who, packed as close as dried dates in a basket by the irresistible forward press of the people, found themselves suddenly occupationless, without power to move their arms, or ply their hands.

• 1913 — F. M. Mayor, The Third Miss Symons, Chapter X:

  There are fewer occupationless Englishmen abroad, but there is a fair supply—half-pay officers, consumptives, and mysterious creatures, who have no good reason for being there.