LOAFING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does loafing mean? 

• LOAFING (noun)
  The noun LOAFING has 1 sense:

1. having no employment

  Familiarity information: LOAFING used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LOAFING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having no employment

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

idleness; idling; loafing

Hypernyms ("loafing" is a kind of...):

inactivity (being inactive; being less active)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "loafing"):

dolce far niente (carefree idleness)

 Context examples 

But there was no more loafing.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

For that matter, they were all loafing,—Buck, John Thornton, and Skeet and Nig,—waiting for the raft to come that was to carry them down to Dawson.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Life had a thousand faces, and White Fang found he must meet them all—thus, when he went to town, in to San Jose, running behind the carriage or loafing about the streets when the carriage stopped.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

As it pulled up, one of the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer, who had rushed up with the same intention.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Themselves, they had covered twelve hundred miles with two days’ rest, and in the nature of reason and common justice they deserved an interval of loafing.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

“You know I was travelling to Japan for my health,” she said, as we lingered at the fire after dinner and delighted in the movelessness of loafing.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

For weeks at a time they would hold on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozen muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of the fire.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

We had been loafing along, till now, our sails shaking half the time and spilling the wind; and twice, for short periods, we had been hove to.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Pike, who pulled at Buck’s heels, and who never put an ounce more of his weight against the breast-band than he was compelled to do, was swiftly and repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day was done he was pulling more than ever before in his life.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a row-boat, pulled out to the Tuolomee and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)