SHIRK

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does shirk mean? 

• SHIRK (verb)
  The verb SHIRK has 2 senses:

1. avoid (one's assigned duties)

2. avoid dealing with

  Familiarity information: SHIRK used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SHIRK (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they shirk    ... he / she / it shirks   
Past simple: shirked   
Past participle: shirked   
-ing form: shirking   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Avoid (one's assigned duties)

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

fiddle; goldbrick; shirk; shrink from

Context example:

The derelict soldier shirked his duties

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

avoid (refrain from doing something)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "shirk"):

scrimshank (British military language: avoid work)

malinger; skulk (avoid responsibilities and duties, e.g., by pretending to be ill)

slack (avoid responsibilities and work, be idle)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

shirker (a person who shirks his work or duty (especially one who tries to evade military service in wartime))

shirking (the evasion of work or duty)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Avoid dealing with

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Context example:

She shirks her duties

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

avoid (stay clear from; keep away from; keep out of the way of someone or something)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

 Context examples 

With you at the end awaiting me, I have never shirked.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Writing and accounts she was taught by her father; French by her mother: her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked her lessons in both whenever she could.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

This was the pride that bore up Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered and shirked in the traces or hid away at harness-up time in the morning.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

“Search him, some of you shirking lubbers, and the rest of you aloft and get the chest,” he cried.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

A pause—in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and to feel that the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no longer to be shirked, must be firmly sustained.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Now, that's shirking.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Mr. and Mrs. Morse had condemned him for an idler and a shirk and through Ruth had urged that he take a clerk's position in an office.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He came between him and the shirks he should have punished.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The hot weather made him indolent, and he had shirked his studies, tried Mr. Brooke's patience to the utmost, displeased his grandfather by practicing half the afternoon, frightened the maidservants half out of their wits by mischievously hinting that one of his dogs was going mad, and, after high words with the stableman about some fancied neglect of his horse, he had flung himself into his hammock to fume over the stupidity of the world in general, till the peace of the lovely day quieted him in spite of himself.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)