One who loafs about; an idler. An American would have applied the term to the Athenian quidnuncs described by St. Luke.
1835. “The late Ben. Smith, Loafer.”—Title of a witty sketch by Cornelius Matthews: Knick. Mag., vi. 63 (July).
1837. People are not willing to meet on terms of sociability and equality a man who claims the acquaintance of every loafer, male or female, he may chance to meet.—Id., ix. 115 (Feb.).
1837. Quigg the congressman was now but a ragged gentleman—a loafer.—Id., ix. 343 (April).
1837. My room is full of loafers tormenting me to death about a sixpenny Canal claim.—Charles L. Livingston to Jesse Hoyt. W. L. Mackenzie, ‘Life of Martin Van Buren,’ p. 181. (Italics in the original.)
1837. Mr. Dabbs came home from his “loafing” place—for he “loafs” of an evening, like the generality of people—that being the most popular and the cheapest amusement extant.—J. C. Neal, ‘Charcoal Sketches,’ p. 34. (N.E.D.)
1837. A paper on “Loafers and Loafing,” by James Richardson, Harvardiana, iii. 301–4.
1837. He is a long, lank, lean, lazy loafer, six feet high, and shaped somewhat like a flatfish as to his three dimensions of length, breadth, and thickness.—Yale Lit. Mag., ii. 150 (Feb.).
1837. A correspondent of the Balt. Comml. Transcript (Aug. 19, p. 2/3) contends that the new term “Loafer” is traceable to the “land laufer” of Scott’s ‘Antiquary,’ chap. xiii. The word occurs in the same paper, July 15, 2/1; Aug. 1, 2/1; Aug. 31, 2/3; Sept. 2, 2/1, &c.
1838. We are beset at every corner, and in every street and alley, by loafers, agents, and seventh-rate county court lawyers.—Mr. Duncan of Ohio, House of Repr., March 30: Cong. Globe, p. 241, Appendix.
1839. A youth returning to his father’s domicil for support, and loafing it about.—Farmer’s Monthly Visitor, i. 28 (Concord, N.H.).
1839. Every citizen of New York ought to turn “loafer” for at least two months each summer. Let him loaf to the Falls, the Catskills, &c.—Havana (N.Y.) Republican, Sept. 11.
1840. There are no people to whom the newly-invented Yankee word of “loafer” is more appropriate than to the Spanish Americans.—R. H. Dana, Jr., ‘Two Years before the Mast,’ chap. vii. p. 58. (N.E.D.)
1840. Two or three loafers—poor shoats—were brought up and fined for sleeping in the streets.—Daily Pennant, St. Louis, June 23.
1841. [These petitioners] were purchased by hired loafers at the corners of streets, at four dollars per hundred.—Mr. Wood of N.Y., House of Repr., Aug. 3: Cong. Globe, p. 280, App.
1841. A loafer is a term applied to an idler who troubles himself about other men’s business, and who is a lounger about places of public or private amusements; and also to a low thief and vagabond.—J. S. Buckingham, ‘America,’ i. 235. (Italics in the original.)
1843. The one [party] was known as the Silk-stocking Gentry: the other by the comprehensive appellation of the Loafers.—Cornelius Mathews, ‘Writings,’ p. 43.
1844. Hence, just now, Mrs. Pawkins kept a boarding-house, and Major Pawkins rather “loafed” his time away, than otherwise.—Dickens, ‘Martin Chuzzlewit,’ chap. xvi. (N.E.D.)
1844. [He] returned the salutation, by requesting the Oriental loafer immediately to make sail for the lower regions.—Watmough, ‘Scribblings and Sketches,’ p. 112.
1846. They were taken away to loaf upon the community while these others of inferior grade discharged the duties they should discharge.—Mr. Hamlin of Maine, House of Repr., March 23: Cong. Globe, p. 535.
1848. A score of loafers from the ‘unwashed democracy’ had got together for the purpose of seeing a live President.—Durivage and Burnham, ‘Stray Subjects,’ p. 177.
1850. There were no loafers about the mill to-night.—S. Judd, ‘Richard Edney,’ p. 47.
1854. He would have abandoned his crazy chair to the whittling loafers who frequent his office.—Weekly Oregonian, Oct. 7.
1856. They are not persons of reputation, as none but loafers travel with hair-trunks.—Knick. Mag., xlvii. 598 (June).
1856. John, the oldest son, adopted the ancient and honourable profession of a loafer. To lie idle in the sun in front of some small grog-shop, to attend horse-races, cock-fights, and gander-pullings, to flaunt out occasionally in a new waistcoat bought with money which came nobody knew how, were pleasures to him all-satisfactory.—H. B. Stowe, ‘Dred,’ chap. viii.
1856. It is said that a loafer is known by the three characteristics of wearing stand-up shirt collars, swearing, and smoking cigars.—Yale Lit. Mag., xxi. 311 (July).
1860. We only regret, in the working department, that you cannot make loafers and horse thieves work as hard as you do.—Brigham Young at Logan, Utah, June 10: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ viii. 79.
1861. In every town of Kentucky there is a set of gentlemanly loafers, who in pleasant weather sit on chairs atilt at the street-corners under the trees, moving round with the shadow the whole day.—Harper’s Weekly, p. 633/4, Oct. 5.
1865. There were some professional slave-dealers, and many nondescripts who would represent the various shades between loafers and blacklegs, in any free community.—A. D. Richardson, ‘The Secret Service,’ p. 67 (Hartford).
1870. [He was] the political oracle of the red-eyed loafers who congregated together in the low groggeries of the town where he lived.—J. H. Beadle, ‘Life in Utah,’ p. 80 (Phila., &c.).
