Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word loafer. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word loafer, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say loafer in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word loafer you have here. The definition of the word loafer will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofloafer, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
1923, George Washington Ogden, “Chapter 2”, in The Baron of Diamond Tail:
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.
Borrowed from Spanishlobo(“wolf”), reinterpreted as or conflated with loafer(“idler”); compare the alternative forms which reflect other re-interpretations and conflations. Doublet of lupus and 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
“loafer”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-03
