noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   One who shirks a duty or responsibility.
2. 2
   a person who shirks their work or duty (especially one who tries to evade military service in wartime) wordnet
3. 3
   One who is lazy.

   "the shirkers in the family complain when she gets them chopping up wood for a few hours in the woodshed"

Synonyms

All synonyms

goldbrickslackerslackerbumbunglerclock watcher

Antonyms

All antonyms

doer

Example

More examples

"the shirkers in the family complain when she gets them chopping up wood for a few hours in the woodshed"

Etymology

From shirk + -er.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.