Library / English Dictionary

LOITER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Be about

Example:

Who is this man that is hanging around the department?

Synonyms:

footle; hang around; lallygag; linger; loaf; loiter; lollygag; lounge; lurk; mess about; mill about; mill around; tarry

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Hypernyms (to "loiter" is one way to...):

be (have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun))

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "loiter"):

lurch; prowl (loiter about, with no apparent aim)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Derivation:

loiterer (someone who lingers aimlessly in or about a place)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Her exertions did not stop here; for she soon afterwards felt herself so heroically disposed as to determine, under pretence of fetching Marianne, to leave the others by themselves; and she really did it, and THAT in the handsomest manner, for she loitered away several minutes on the landing-place, with the most high-minded fortitude, before she went to her sister.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old streets with a sober pleasure that calmed my spirits, and eased my heart.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The general's improving hand had not loitered here: every modern invention to facilitate the labour of the cooks had been adopted within this, their spacious theatre; and, when the genius of others had failed, his own had often produced the perfection wanted.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that weighed upon my heart, but idly loitering near it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Towards the end of the morning, however, Catherine, having occasion for some indispensable yard of ribbon which must be bought without a moment's delay, walked out into the town, and in Bond Street overtook the second Miss Thorpe as she was loitering towards Edgar's Buildings between two of the sweetest girls in the world, who had been her dear friends all the morning.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Often and often, now, had I seen him in the dead of night passing along the streets, searching, among the few who loitered out of doors at those untimely hours, for what he dreaded to find.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The tediousness of a two hours' wait at Petty France, in which there was nothing to be done but to eat without being hungry, and loiter about without anything to see, next followed—and her admiration of the style in which they travelled, of the fashionable chaise and four—postilions handsomely liveried, rising so regularly in their stirrups, and numerous outriders properly mounted, sunk a little under this consequent inconvenience.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

We loitered along in front of them, and Dora often stopped to admire this one or that one, and I stopped to admire the same one, and Dora, laughing, held the dog up childishly, to smell the flowers; and if we were not all three in Fairyland, certainly I was.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless, meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with a gentleman.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)