malinger

From French malingrer, from adjective malingre (“delicate, fragile”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /məˈlɪŋɡə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /məˈlɪŋɡɚ/

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• Rhymes: -ɪŋɡə(ɹ)

malinger (third-person singular simple present malingers, present participle malingering, simple past and past participle malingered)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To feign illness, injury, or incapacitation in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.

   Hypernyms: (dated) goldbrick, shirk

   It is not uncommon on exam days for several students to malinger rather than prepare themselves.

   • 1915 June, T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, in Prufrock and Other Observations, London: The Egotist […], published 1917, →OCLC, page 13:

     And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! / Smoothed by long fingers, / Asleep … tired … or it malingers, / Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

   • 1984, The Psychiatric Quarterly‎, volume 56:

     It has been the impression of past investigators that persons who malinger psychosis have latent tendencies for the condition.

2. (transitive, intransitive) To self-inflict real injury or infection (to inflict self-harm) in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.

• malingerer
• malingering
• malingery

• factitious disorder, differentiated from malingering by a component of real mental illness as opposed to solely a sane calculation of shirking
• fakeclaim: to call out someone for, or accuse someone of, either factitious pretense or malingering

• Germinal, germinal, maligner

malinger m or f

1. indefinite plural of maling