SHIRKING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Shirking

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/ʃˈərkɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Shirk v. t. (past & past part. shirked; pres. part. shirking)

To procure by petty fraud and trickery; to obtain by mean solicitation. "You that never heard the call of any vocation,... that shirk living from others, but time from Yourselves."

To avoid; to escape; to neglect; implying unfaithfulness or fraud; as, to shirk duty. "The usual makeshift by which they try to shirk difficulties."

Shirk v. i.

To live by shifts and fraud; to shark.

To evade an obligation; to avoid the performance of duty, as by running away. "One of the cities shirked from the league."

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Etymology of 'Shirking'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Shirking" Quotes from Famous Books

... manor born. She came here as a school-teacher, but soon after she came she married my father. He was easy and indulgent with his servants, and held them with a very loose rein. But my mother was firm and energetic. She made the niggers move around. No shirking nor dawdling with her. When my father died, she took matters in hand, but she only outlived him a few months. If she had lived I believe that she would have retrieved our fortune. I know that she had more executive ability than my father. He was very squeamish about selling his servants, ...

— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... this noon about shirking. I'm through with dodging any kind of work just because it's unpleasant. I want to take my part with the ...

— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... excuse for shirking duty and returning to the old habits of a Corsican agitator was at hand. The events of August tenth settled the fate of all monarchical institutions, even those which were partly charitable. Among other royal foundations suppressed by ...

— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... This done, he unblushingly ran up a flag of truce, and permitted the Count and the chief families to come on board and buy back their relations. In 1589, after picking up a stray trader or two, he fell in with La Serena, a galley of Malta, which had a Turkish prize in tow. Far from shirking a conflict with so formidable an antagonist, Mur[a]d gave hot pursuit with his single galleot, and coming up with the Serena, boarded and mastered her in half an hour. Then, after stopping to arrest the misdoings of a Majorcan pirate, who was poaching ...

— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... object except to kill time; and to know that these men, wearing their country's uniform, and drawing their pay from her exhausted exchequer, were lingering at home on various pretexts, and basely and deliberately shirking their duty, while rebellion still reared its horrid front, and the Government required every arm that could be raised in its defence. That energetic document put a stop to all this; but the question here arises, Can the men be ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

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