loafern.

1830 Mechanic's Press (Utica, N.Y.) 10 July 274/1 Nor are they topers at taverns, or benchers at groceries, or loafers who ‘chase misfortune o'er the towpath’.

1835 Knickerbocker 6 63 The late Ben Smith, Loafer. I present an outline sketch of one of that species of the genus homo..which Custom has christened with the expressive appellation of Loafer!

1839 Knickerbocker Mag. 13 39 It was something like going to sea passenger, idler, loafer, what you please.

1840 R. H. Dana Two Years before Mast vii. 17 The men appeared to be the laziest people upon the face of the earth; and indeed..there are no people to whom the newly invented Yankee word of ‘loafer’ is more applicable than to the Spanish Americans.

1842 C. Dickens Amer. Notes II. vi. 151 When we stop to change, some two or three half-drunken loafers will come loitering out with their hands in their pockets.

1852 H. D. Thoreau Jrnl. 30 Sept. (1997) V. 363 Even the insects in my path are not loafers but have their special errands.

1873 C. G. Leland Eng. Gipsies & their Lang. vi. 89 When the term first began to be popular in 1834 or 1835, I can distinctly remember that it meant to pilfer. Such, at least, is my earliest recollection, and of hearing school boys ask one another in jest, of their acquisitions or gifts, ‘Where did you loaf that from?’ A petty pilferer was a loafer, but in a very short time all of the tribe of loungers in the sun, and the disreputable pickers up of unconsidered trifles,..were called loafers.

1893 H. P. Liddon et al. Life E. B. Pusey I. ii Older boys knew that he was no loafer: and when he felt unwell he could always get off ‘fagging cricket’.