MALINGER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does malinger mean? 

• MALINGER (verb)
  The verb MALINGER has 1 sense:

1. avoid responsibilities and duties, e.g., by pretending to be ill

  Familiarity information: MALINGER used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MALINGER (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they malinger    ... he / she / it malingers   
Past simple: malingered   
Past participle: malingered   
-ing form: malingering   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Avoid responsibilities and duties, e.g., by pretending to be ill

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

malinger; skulk

Hypernyms (to "malinger" is one way to...):

fiddle; goldbrick; shirk; shrink from (avoid (one's assigned duties))

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s

Derivation:

malingerer (someone shirking their duty by feigning illness or incapacity)

malingering (evading duty or work by pretending to be incapacitated)

 Context examples 

Malingering is a subject upon which I have sometimes thought of writing a monograph.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

On the next day Koona went, and but five of them remained: Joe, too far gone to be malignant; Pike, crippled and limping, only half conscious and not conscious enough longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and who was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and Buck, still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline or striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keeping the trail by the loom of it and by the dim feel of his feet.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)