loafer
English
Pronunciation
- Lua error in Module:parameters at line 95: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "RP" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /ˈləʊfə/
- Lua error in Module:parameters at line 95: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "GA" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /ˈloʊfɚ/
- Rhymes: -əʊfə(r)
Etymology 1
Perhaps short for landloafer, possibly a partial translation of German Landläufer (compare dialectal German loofen "to run"); or connected to (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Middle English lo(o)ve, lo(o)ffinge "a remnant, the rest, that which remains or lingers" from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old English lāf (“remainder, residue, what is left”) (more at lave), which is akin to Scots lave (“the rest, remainder”), Old English lǣfan (“to leave behind”) (more at leave).
Noun
loafer (plural loafers)
Synonyms
- (idle person): bum, bumpkin, footler, idler, lout, yob, yobbo
- (footwear): penny loafer
- See also Thesaurus:idler
Translations
Etymology 2
From American (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Spanish lobo (“wolf”) (/ˈloβo/), reinterpreted as or conflated with loafer (“idler”); compare the alternative forms which reflect other re-interpretations and conflations. Doublet of lupus.
Alternative forms
Noun
loafer (plural loafers)
- (Southwestern US dialects) A wolf, especially a grey or timber wolf.
- 1964, Ike Blasingame, Dakota Cowboy: My Life in the Old Days, page 72:
- The great menace to livestock, other than the continual battle with cold, [...] was the gray wolf. [...] The big loafers came in from everywhere.
- 2010, Cynthia K. Rhodes, Lucille Mulhall: An Athlete of Her Time, →ISBN:
- 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.
- 2016, Patrick Dearen, A Cowboy of the Pecos, page 128:
- 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.
Usage notes
- Often used in compound with "wolf": "loafer wolf".
Further reading
- Robert N. Smead, Vocabulario Vaquero/Cowboy Talk: A Dictionary of Spanish Terms from the American West
Anagrams
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/əʊfə(r)
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms derived from Spanish
- English doublets
- Southwestern US English
- English dialectal terms
- English terms with quotations
- en:Footwear