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loafer

Pronunciation: /ˈləʊfə/

The English word “loafer” has 5 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. An idle person.
  2. A shoe with no laces, resembling a moccasin.
  3. A particular orthogonal spaceship in Conway's Game of Life that moves at a speed of c/7, and the smallest such example.
  4. A wolf, especially a grey or timber wolf.

verb

  1. To loaf around; to be idle.

Etymology

Perhaps short for landloafer, possibly a partial translation of German Landläufer (compare dialectal German loofen (“to run”), and English landlouper); or more likely connected to Middle English love, loove, loffinge, looffinge (“a remnant, the rest, that which remains or lingers”), from Old English lāf (“remainder, residue, what is left”) (more at lave), which is akin to Scots lave (“the rest,…

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