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definitions

loaf

2
[lohf]
||
SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR loaf ON THESAURUS.COM

verb (used without object)

to idle away time: He figured the mall was as good a place as any for loafing.
to lounge or saunter lazily and idly: We loafed for hours along the water's edge.

verb (used with object)

to pass idly (usually followed by away): to loaf one's life away.

Origin of loaf

2
1825–35, Americanism; back formation from loafer
Related formsun·loaf·ing, adjective

Synonyms for loaf

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR loaf ON THESAURUS.COM
2. loll, idle.
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Related Words for loafing

idle, rambling, slacking, futile, lazy, worthless, apathetic, careless, indifferent, uninterested

Examples from the Web for loafing

Historical Examples of loafing

  • He don't like him loafing around here: he sent him home last Sunday.

    K

    Mary Roberts Rinehart

  • Even if they make you a street-scavenger, remember that is better than loafing.

  • Instead of the loafing chairs we still had rusty old sabres then.

  • Damascus is more inclined to loafing or to dancing than to reading.

  • What's all that loafing about galleries, I ask ye, but the worst of all idling?

    One Of Them

    Charles James Lever

British Dictionary definitions for loafing

loaf

1

noun plural loaves (ləʊvz)

a shaped mass of baked bread
any shaped or moulded mass of food, such as cooked meat
slang the head; senseuse your loaf!

Word Origin for loaf

Old English hlāf; related to Old High German hleib bread, Old Norse hleifr, Latin libum cake

loaf

2

verb

(intr) to loiter or lounge around in an idle way
(tr foll by away) to spend (time) idlyhe loafed away his life

Word Origin for loaf

C19: perhaps back formation from loafer
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for loafing

loaf

n.

late 13c., from Old English hlaf "portion of bread baked in a mass of definite form," from Proto-Germanic *khlaibuz (cf. Old Norse hleifr, Swedish lev, Old Frisian hlef, Old High German hleib, German Laib, Gothic hlaifs "bread, loaf"), of uncertain origin, perhaps connected to Old English hlifian "to raise higher, tower," on the notion of the bread rising as it bakes, but it is unclear whether "loaf" or "bread" is the original sense. Finnish leipä, Old Church Slavonic chlebu, Lithuanian klepas probably are Germanic loan words. Meaning "chopped meat shaped like a bread loaf" is attested from 1787.

loaf

v.

1835, American English, back-formation from loafer (1830), which often is regarded as a variant of land loper (1795), a partial loan-translation of German Landläufer "vagabond," from Land "land" + Läufer "runner," from laufen "to run" (see leap). But OED finds this connection "not very probable." Related: Loafed; loafing.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Idioms and Phrases with loafing

loaf

see half a loaf is better than none.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.