Lazy Bum Nicknames
Those lazy, hazy days of summer aren’t too far off, and hopefully you’ll be lolling like a slug at the pool, on the beach, or wherever warm days might take you. But even if you’re feeling lazy, your vocabulary doesn’t have to be. We’ve worked with the editors at the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) to come up with 13 regional idioms to describe the idle, indifferent, and lackadaisical.
1. MOLOWA
In Hawaii and pretending to be sick to get out of work? You might get called molowa, moloa, ormoloha from the Hawaiian word moloā.
2. DON’T-CARE-ISH
In Louisiana and Alabama African-American vernacular, the lazy and indifferent are don’t-care-ish and don’t-care-ified: “She’s so don’t-care-ish about work lately. She’s just phoning it in.”“You bone loafer!” you might say to someone sleeping on the job. This term is found in the Ozarks, which is made up of northwestern Arkansas, northeastern Oklahoma, and southwestern Missouri. Bone idle and bone lazy are South Midland sayings. All come from the idea, says an 1825 quote in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), of being so lazy or idle that the laziness or idleness seems “to have penetrated the very bones.”
6. DO-LESS
A do-less does little. He lacks energy and is shiftless and lethargic. Common in the South Midland states, the word might simply be a combination of “do” and “less,” but in some instances might be influenced by the Scots dowless, without strength or energy, feeble.
7. SPRAWLLESS
In New England, if you’ve got sprawl, you’ve got energy, initiative, and spunk. Therefore, those without sprawl or who are sprawlless are lazy. A quote from Cape Cod, Massachusetts: “He ain’t got no more sprawl to him ’n day-old kitten!” Why does sprawl mean energy? The word comes sproil, an English dialectical meaning “strength, energy; power of quick motion, spring, activity, agility.”
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